Enda Kenny called out the Church the other day for the insidious funding for a No vote on the Lisbon Treaty. Many right-wing Church funded groups are campaigning for a No vote because it will give European Courts more power to decide on local issues like abortion, equality, children’s rights and gay marriage. They don’t like that as they would prefer the much more conservative Irish Court system to use our dictated by the Catholic Church constitution to knock back anything which the Church is against. Bertie would never make such a call since he was in the pocket of the Church.
Also fair play to the Green Party who yesterday broke ranks to ask for less road funding and more funding for public transport initiatives outside of Dublin. They launched their sudbmission on a bus going around Dublin. My favourite Green Ciarán Cuffe (there wasn’t sarcasm there, he’s cool) was all over the radio talking about their submission to the Sustainable Transport Plan and really it made me harp back to the intelligence and logic the Greens had in bucketloads before the election. The old Green Party were out yesterday. It’d be nice to see plans like this turn into reality though.
A hippy bus, but not the Green Party hippy bus.
Photo owned by BusGreg (cc)
Did you hear Ciaran Cuffe (presume it was him) on Today FM when asked what to do about the single transport ticket for Dublin? He basically said that all parties should sit down together and work it out and if they couldn’t they should be sacked! Let’s hope they can bring some backbone to the public transport debate.
I’m an atheist but I find it sinister when politicians start pushing a religious denomination to vote a particular way in a referendum. And FF are the last people who have any right to lecture others on sources of funding, given their own apalling history of corruption exposed by the tribunals. What about all the EU funding going to the yes campaign, including MEPs allowances?
Two comments. First, religious groups should stay out of political debates, and fair play to FG for calling the Catholic Church on it. If individual catholics have an opinion, great. The Church, however, is not a political group and Lisbon has no implications for religion, so they should stay well out.
Second, I am glad to see the Green Transport policy seperate from the Government, and I was disappointed at how quick Noel Dempsey was to play it down. But then, I’ve got a history with Noel Dempsey! Anyway, that’s not actually the first departure – I remember Ciaran being in Galway recently to launch a transport plan for the city which was quite a departure from government policy. I think the real Greens are still there, it’s just hard sometimes to see it with the Fianna Fáil strangelhold on the government. Let’s hope that there’s more courageous seperate policies like this!
I agree on both counts Damo. I think the greens needed a chance to get their feet under the table and hopefully now we will see/hear more of them.
What does this mean for Take Enda With You?
I’m honored to have my old bus on your website. Thank you sir. While I am not familiar with your politics, I do agree whole heartedly with the comenter about separating church and state. The last time this was tried on this side of the pond (mixing church and state) human beings were burnt at the stake!
Peace always, and again thanks for using the picture of my last bus.
greg williams