Damien Mulley

This is a continuation of a rant from the previous post. I don’t have a lot of love for any party or politician in this country. None of them really care and all of them are now part of a broken system they all first want to fix and suddenly become part of, making it even worse. It amazes me that people who have all these ideals still consider voting for any party and that some voters have this really stupid fucking attitude of “well they’re not as bad as the other party.” “Not as bad” isn’t what or who should be running our country.

Simon has a post on the next election here. Auds has a reply too. Simon says it’s time for change and to vote the current Government out. I think the time has run out on ALL parties. They all need to be voted out of office. Reboot the political system in Ireland. The others will get in and fuck things up just as much. Still I also abhor the fact that voters will keep the Bertie show in office because Enda and Pat are clowns and will make it worse.

Look at all the comments in the blog posts above and how already the lines are drawn and the bitching has started between bloggers. Change will never happen with politicians the way they are and bloggers who debate politics with childish and immature attitudes and who get personal and very pathetic after two comments. Lot of political bloggers have political aspirations whether they admit it or not and want to make changes. They can make things change because they have the key element of passion but until they stop attacking each other, the current political system will remain no matter which party is in charge. Nobody takes nitpickers seriously and yet so many bloggers seriously nitpick.

If bloggers think they have the ability to make changes then they need to mature a hell of a lot and stop acting like jerks to each other and to the greater world. I wouldn’t vote for any politicians and I certainly wouldn’t vote for any of bloggers either to run a country or advise on it. Write as many articles as you want, create as many websites as you want but until as a collective bloggers mature, they have no chance of influencing the political establishment to change.

We may point to Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes and I like how Guido irks so many because of his readership as Jeff Jarvis points out but taking down someone that needs to be taken down is not enough. All that does is make the rest cover their tracks more. There’s less than a handful of bloggers who have actually contributed to real life campaigns and initiatives to make changes. I respect them and will allow them to influence me. The rest I see as spoiled kids stamping their feet when not getting their way. Until that changes then blogging for change will be futile.

Hmm, have I insulted enough people with this post?

Edit: More commentary from: The InFactahnistas, John Timmons, Richard Waghorne , Adam Maguire, Adam Maguire again, Tom Raftery, Suzy Byrne, the lovely Auds ,Simon the Dosser, a great post from Treasa and one from Fergal Crehan.

One of the things that annoys me about IrishElection.com is the fact those that post on it also post their thoughts on their own blogs so you see the same post replicated throughout the Blog O’Sphere. I find it probably cheapens the site as the content isn’t unique. Anyway, now I’m doing the same as I’m replicating comments I wrote on it. Adam Maguire reported that Labour is considering inviting bloggers to their Ard Fheis. Here were my thoughts and I’ll add more to the end of it:

Wow, they’re going to give bloggers doggie treats in the form of invites. Are we worthy? I’d much rather Labour and every other party listen to people whether they be pensioners, craftsmen, yachting folk, bloggers or teens.

however we can normally only invite people from the mainstream press as we know who they are

To me that reads “We’d rather invite people who will toe the line or whose reactions we can predict when we feed them the usual PR shite.” It also seems to me that they don’t understand what bloggers are. Bloggers are not journalists. We are not paid to write stuff on something we don’t give a damn about.

I’m sure they’d rather not invite someone that listens to one of them up at the podium and instantly blogs “Man that guy is just bullshitting”. Labour and all the rest don’t give a flying fig about people though. What they and the rest care* about are voters. Voters are not the same as people in their eyes. How about Labour actually listens to people and not pander to voters? The fact Labour have to make a conscious decision and change some bloody policy to “invite” bloggers means they are well and truly STILL NOT GETTING IT.

Here’s a free consultation: Enable the Ard Fheis with free net access and free power strips for those with laptops. Don’t invite bloggers, enable people to comment via their own laptops at the event, via forums and via genuine blogs from Labour. If bloggers are there then good, if not that’s fine too. But that’s just a start. Engage with people using all forms of media, not just blogs. Blogs you don’t control and forums you don’t control. Listen to what people care about and have issues about. Forums, blogs, emails and so forth. And for the love of christ stop with the Joan Burton press releases dressed up as blog posts and spamming IrishBlogs.ie.

Do what Dave Winer suggested too. Pick a bunch of people and get them to blog about issues they think are important. People, not voters. And certainly not the party hacks/labour apologists who are so blind that they can’t see their party has things that need to be fixed like every other human created organisation.

*where care is the action of appeasing** those that will grant them power.
** where appeasing means using any and all honest and disonest means to placate someone

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Just so we’re clear I don’t hate the Labour party, I just hold them at the same level as the rest of the parties in this country. Low.