Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Which Way to Independence?

Borthlas, in his blog, claims that devolution does not lead to independence. He implies that Labour ushered in devolution without knowing where it would lead and what is certain is that the Labour government had no intention that it should lead to independence and the break-up of the Union as we know it. Those of us who welcomed devolution and the devolving of powers to the National Assembly did not necessarily see the end-game as independence - although some of us did. The method by which it was employed, through the introduction of LCO's proved to be cumbersome in the extreme, if not degrading for a nation to go "cap in hand" to the Westminster parliament for approval and ratification of laws which had been fully debated and passed by the Assembly in Cardiff.

The "Yes" vote in the forthcoming referendum on a Parliament for Wales is a means in part of resolving the present unsatisfactory situation and further cementing the powers of the legislature in Cardiff. It is another step in the road to devolution. Yet, as Scotland knows, the outcome will be less than a nation deserves. Although the Welsh government will have greater powers to manage its resources and legislate for its own people and nation, it will not have full control over decision-making in its own domain. The only way this can be achieved is by pursuing the path towards independence and national sovereignty. So the question arises: how will independence be achieved? I maintain that it will be achieved by default. When Scotland, which is farther along the road, both in its government's programme and in its favourable response from the people of Scotland, carries out its independence referendum successfully and with a positive outcome and withdraws from the Union, the scene will be set for the people of Wales to make a choice, to remain in a defunct Union which no longer has meaning or to opt for independence and allow Cymru to take its sovereign place alongside the nations of Europe.

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

The Looming Irish Election

Political choices

- Politics is about making choices. FF/ Green government made bad choices. FG and Labour promise more of the same. Billions to be pumped into clapped out banks and cuts for people on low and middle incomes.

- There is a better way. Sinn Féin makes different choices. Through job creation, tax reform and eliminating waste we have shown how the deficit can be reduced over six years. But you cannot do that and take on the burden of private bank debt as well. The fact is that if the state takes on this burden, interest on our debts will be €8.7 billion by 2014 –one quarter of the current tax take.

There is a better way.

- There is still time to stop FF, FG and Labour putting €30.6 billion into the toxic banks.

- A vote for Sinn Féin is a vote against this money being put into Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide, zombie banks which are going to be shut down anyway.

- There needs to be a referendum on this bank bailout. If the people are being asked to pay Sinn Fein says ‘let them have their say’

What SF would do

- End the gravy train – cut ministers and TDs salaries

- Abolish USC and replace with 48% tax rate on individuals earning over €100,000

- Reverse cuts in social welfare. – government cut social welfare by €873 million and then paid out €750 million to Anglo bondholders.

The Dáil needs a strong opposition.

- There needs to be a strong party of opposition in the Dáil.

- Sinn Féin is the only party that will stand up for ordinary people. Look at our record. We are the only party that can be relied on to hold the incoming government to account.

- Sinn Féin won’t let a Fine Gael let government target the low paid, those on social welfare or public sector workers. We won’t let them protect the fat cats, privatise our health system or capitulate to the EU or IMF. We won’t let them shrug their shoulders and say “we have had a look at the books and things are a lot worse than we thought” as they renege on election promises. Wouldn’t you like the next Finance Minister to know that whatever he agrees in Brussels he has to bring back and explain to Pearse Doherty in the Dåil.

Sunday, 20 February 2011

The Progressive Rise of Sinn Fein

Paul Hayes

CONTACT

086 858 9019
email: paulforthedail@gmail.com

facebook: Put Paul in the Dail

OTHER CANDIDATES

Click here to flag inaccuracies.

CONSTITUENCY	PARTY
Cork South West - 3 seats	Sinn Féin

Paul Hayes is not on Twitter or the twitter account is unknown.

BACKGROUND

Paul Hayes is a native of Clonakilty and former Town Councillor. The 33 year old father of two now resides in Courtmacsherry. He works on a part-time basis in sales and business development for an Irish coffee company based in Bandon.

A member of Sinn Féin for 15 years Paul has held various positions at local, regional and national level. He is currently member of the Ard Chomhairle (National Executive).

He is an active member of several voluntary groups in West Cork including Clon Fairtrade Group, Sustainable Clon, Special Olympics Ireland, and is a director of Clon Youth Café.

If elected, Paul is keen to tackle issues affecting young people especially such as job prospects, mental health issues & rising emigration, and the struggles facing many young families – job uncertainty, debt issues and rising costs of childcare, education and healthcare.

He sees huge potential in a sustainable energy industry and an invigorated fishing industry locally and nationally, including the proper branding and marketing of Irish fish.

Hayes favours a stimulus package to get the country back to work building much needed roads, schools, public hospitals, broadband infrastructure and expanding the tourism industry to make this region a hub for national and international conferences.

Saturday, 19 February 2011

Politician Watch

Ed Balls is the master of deficit denial, this week he has denied the deficit was a problem and told us the IMF, OECD and the governor of the Bank of England are all wrong and he is right.Now he is denying his own personal debts in Court.

Court papers show that he has claims against him amounting to £1966 over unpaid rent and damage to his Normanton constituency office. He refuses to accept the debt and has offered to pay only a few hundred pounds but the landlord has now had enough of his arguing about the debt and taken him to Court. We all know what Balls is like when it comes to admitting debts. If only we could have him tried in the same way for running up the national debt...

(from Guido Fawkes)

Fall of The UK and Rise of Celtic National Pride

Sinn Fein Irish flag removed from Roof of Dail Eireann to avoid shame

Pearse Doherty with Fire in the Belly

Friday, 18 February 2011

Ioan Gruffudd - Dwedwch Ie dros Gymru

Women say Yes! Menywod yn dweud Ie!

Dear supporters,

We'd like to invite you to our Women Say Yes for Wales event on Thursday 24 February at the Park House Club, Cardiff.

Hosted by Rosemary Butler, AM, the event provides a platform for women from all walks of life to explain why they will be voting YES on 3 March!

The event starts at 11am promptly - so please arrive in time to take your seats by then. We should be wrapped up by approximately 11.30am.

It would be great to see you if you can make it to show your support! Please RSVP in advance to info@yesforwales.com byTuesday 22 February if you would like to attend.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

My Predictions for the Irish General Election and Beyond

FIANNA FAIL is finished politically, for the time beng. The government will have a massive defeat.
FINE GAEL will form the next government, with a working majority
SINN FEIN will gain considerable support, as will
LABOUR
GREENS will not do well, having been in government with FIANNA FAIL
INDEPENDENTS will do very well and will form an Independent alliance

This situation will encourage the rise of SINN FEIN in the south, and when SINN FEIN is eventually in power in the North of Ireland as well as in the South the stage will be set for the Unification of Ireland to form a United Irish Republic.

A Man to Watch : Pearse Doherty

Labour and Sinn Féin in fight for left supremacy
30 January 2011

‘We have a sophisticated electorate who know that they have to beware of snake oil salesmen offering solutions."

That warning from Labour Party deputy Pat Rabbitte came in a tense debate with Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty last week as a foretaste of the hostilities between the parties in this election campaign.

Doherty turned the screw on Labour last week when he described its agreement with Fine Gael to facilitate the rapid transit of the Finance Bill through the Dáil as a ‘‘grubby little deal’’.

Several weeks ago, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore ruled out an alliance of the left with Sinn Féin and candidates from the United Left Alliance, citing irreconcilable policy differences. Sinn Féin has retaliated, portraying Labour as yet another establishment party willing to cooperate with the consensus in Leinster House.

Sinn Féin is suggesting that whole sections of budget cuts be reversed, and that Ireland should unilaterally withdraw from the IMF/EU bailout deal and welch on the senior bondholders who lent to Irish banks.

Meanwhile, they believe the €18.7 billion needed to run hospitals, schools, council services and the rest of the public sector could be funded from the National Pension Reserve Fund and the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) on the assumption that Ireland could return to those same bond markets next year to borrow again.

It’s been described as an irresponsible and naive plan by all the major parties, but it will form a key part of Sinn Féin’s manifesto.

Unsurprisingly, it has proven attractive to a population feeling the pain of new budget taxes, welfare cuts and record unemployment.

Labour has grown jittery at Sinn Féin’s threat to the Gilmore Gale in key constituencies, while Fianna Fáil deputies fear the party’s climbing poll numbers will relegate them to the remotest opposition backbenches in the 31st Dáil.

Doherty, dubbed ‘the young gun’ by his rivals, is on a mission to hold all parties - but Labour in particular - to account for not pursuing its no confidence motion in the government last week.

Sinn Féin is already on the stump telling voters that Labour could have toppled a highly unstable government - and with it the budget - if it had pursued the motion to prevent the Finance Bill.

Labour has thus found itself outflanked on the left, yet can’t afford to scare off its middle ground support if it is to break through the 40 seat barrier in the general election.

Under Gilmore, Labour has won over large sections of Fianna Fáil’s traditional base.

It has enjoyed unprecedented popularity in the polls in the past 12months.But its support has dipped recently, and the party has a higher proportion of ‘floaters’ and voters who are less committed to casting their ballot on the day.

‘‘Labour has been overtaking Fine Gael in a couple of polls. But they’ve peaked too early and it’s hard to sustain that - they’ve been outflanked on the left and they’re starting to make mistakes and panic," said expert pollster Sean Donnelly.

‘‘People are very angry and they will be voting in this election campaign. Parties such as Sinn Féin and United Left Alliance will attract younger voters and angry voters. In Ireland we don’t really take to the streets: this will be our way of taking to the streets."

Sinn Féin has been a transfer unfriendly party, and traditionally there is a low turnout among its core support. However, this election is expected to break all the norms.

‘‘We have been putting it up to the Labour Party that the option of a left alternative should have been put before the Irish public. But this debate has now moved on," said Doherty, who is certain to regain his seat in Donegal South West.

Doherty is the star performer of the five Sinn Féin TDs - Aengus O’Snodaigh, Martin Ferris, Arthur Morgan and Caoimhghín O’Caoláin. In a recent Dáil speech, Taoiseach Brian Cowen irritably swatted the new deputy’s interruptions away, dubbing him a ‘‘rookie’’ - thereby boosting his profile even further.

The 32-year-old provided a colourful sideshow for the media last Monday night outside the Department of Finance, when he announced that Sinn Féin had been told by finance minister Brian Lenihan to leave a meeting with Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party to discuss the scheduling of the Finance Bill.

Sources at the meeting said when Doherty announced that Sinn Féin would try to block the bill, Lenihan asked Doherty and Morgan to leave as they had nothing practical to contribute. Morgan, however, wanted to stay on, suggesting they could make a constructive contribution on ‘‘minor points’’.

Sources said Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan impishly suggested to Lenihan that Sinn Féin should stay, adding that they might learn something useful about cooperation.

Sinn Féin only exited when a break was taken by the parties to allow the Dáil schedule to be photocopied. The joke later doing the rounds was that Doherty deserved an Oscar for his performance to the cameras.

All the parties are hoping that Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, who is contesting Morgan’s Louth seat, could be the party’s biggest liability in the campaign.

It was a particularly bad week for Adams. The party leader - who unwittingly gained a title as Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead under the parliamentary rules of Westminster - was back in the wars over his knowledge about the economy.

In an interview with LMFM radio in Louth, he said his party would unilaterally withdraw from the IMF/EU bailout deal. However, he was unable to account for how it would raise the €18.7 billion needed to run the country in 2011. Doherty subsequently clarified that the plan was to transfer funds from the NTMA and the National Pension Reserve Fund to service day-to-day spending.

But the interview was seized on by the other parties as further evidence of Adams’ paucity of knowledge about the Irish economy. ‘‘Our position is no different to that of economists like David McWilliams, who is also saying this. People like Shane Ross have a similar position," Doherty said.

‘‘Iceland burned their bondholders and they returned to the markets and the rates that they’re getting are quite low. So it is possible. It does happen, and you wouldn’t get Nobel Prize-winners such as Paul Krugman arguing this issue on the back of an envelope," said Doherty.

The so-called rookie risks media over-exposure, though it’s a risk Sinn Féin is willing to take.

Last week, web links to a BBC Newsline interview with Gerry Adams were being gleefully posted by his critics. Adams was foggy on the details of the budget that he was criticising and was forced to admit that he didn’t know the children’s allowance rate, or the Vat rate for business.

It doesn’t bode well for the round of party leaders’ debates to come. Adams’ less-than-forensic grasp of the details of the economy was badly exposed in the 2007 leaders’ debate with PD leader Michael McDowell and Green Party leader John Gormley.

Fianna Fáil, under new leader Micheál Martin, has its own reasons for going on the attack, as it seeks to foil Sinn Féin’s plans to overtake the Soldiers of Destiny as the main opposition party. If Sinn Féin’s current poll ratings continue, it is on course to take up to 20 seats in the election.

Adams has always denied that he’s a former IRA commander and he will come under pressure on the campaign from the family of Jean McConville, who accuse him of ordering her murder and secret burial in 1972.

But younger voters in this election have only a residual memory of Sinn Féin’s history, and the whiff of sulphur that hangs over the party is unlikely to stem support for them, with the latest Red C poll showing support of 13 per cent, up from 7 per cent in the 2007 general election. Based on current poll numbers, Sinn Féin could add 15 ‘rookie’ TDs to its existing five seats in the Dáil after the next election.

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Sinn Féin Election Broadcast 2011

Scotland and the May Election

SNP surge to Holyrood poll lead

2011-02-15

The SNP tonight welcomed the latest IPSOS Mori opinion poll for Scotland's election published in today's (Wednesday) Times which shows the SNP has overtaken Labour in polling for the Scottish Parliament election.

The poll of 1000 people between the 10th and 13th of February shows the SNP closing the 10 point gap recorded in November by the same polling company with a lead of 37% to Labour's 36%. On the Regional vote the SNP is leading by 35% to 33%. In both the constituency and regional vote the SNP is four points up on the party's election winning performance in 2007.

Commenting on the poll described on the Times front page as "Salmond surges into Holyrood poll lead", SNP Depute Leader and Scotland's Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

"Today's poll shows there is all to play for in Scotland's election this May. With the SNP moving ahead of Labour and achieving a poll rating four points higher than the election results of 2007.

"As voters look toward Scotland's election in May it is the SNP's strong record in office, our team of recognised and trusted ministers and MSPs, and the vision we have for Scotland's future that is winning the support of voters who want to re-elect a Scottish Government that is working for Scotland.

"In the last week the SNP has delivered on jobs with 25,000 apprenticeships, protected public services with a balanced budget, funded the fourth year of a council tax freeze saving the average household £322, and put in place the money to abolish prescription charges from April this year.

"And it is the SNP that is on the same side as people across Scotland in opposing rising fuel prices with our demand for a fuel stabiliser and the scrapping of the Tories duty rise.

"Over the next 80 days as we head toward's Scotland's election, the SNP will continue to govern for Scotland, to build Scotland's economy, protect our public services, and to stand on our record of delivery and vision for Scotland's future."

The Mori/times poll of 1000 people between 10th and 13th February is as follows:

Constituency Vote		Regional Vote
SNP	37%	SNP	35%
Labour	36%	Labour	33%
Tory	13%	Tory	13%
Lib Dem	10%	Lib Dem	10%
		Green	6%

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

A "YES" Vote Must Be Overwhelming