Love, love, love this.

This is the first, but definitely not the last post you will see on this site that features the candidacy of Donald J Trump.

He won’t release his tax returns?  Well what say we speculate as to why…follow the link for more from The Daily Beast.

NAMBLA Becomes Donald Trump’s Birther Moment

All I did was play around with the graphics package I discovered on Google this morning so we can proceed with a logo for this site “going forward” (yuk…don’t let me use that phrase ever again!!!)

The design features, as you can see, the letters FPP set against the “equals” symbol which protrudes outside the box representing the kind of thinking I reckon is required to achieve what I consider to be proper “equality” in society.  The colours black and white represent the extremes which will have to be confronted as each issue is tackled.

I’m sure this logo will change in time but it will do for now.  Today, Sunday. August 7, 2016 was the day First Person Plural, an online concept that has been in my head for a long time now, finally came into being.  We’ll see what I can do with it. JLP

I love my Aunt Brenda to bits.  I have to make that perfectly clear.

© JL Pagano 2016

I do have a decent enough reason for not keeping this blog going…my other site actually makes me some money so it is much more deserving of my time.

© JL Pagano 2016

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Eamonn Gilmore resigned this week, and I am glad he did.

However, I don’t subscribe to the simplistic opinions expressed by so many about the Labour Party.

This coalition government has been far from perfect, but when ever is any kind of government?

What annoys me most of all is that the Labour Party has been pummelled by the electorate on account of “austerity”, particularly because they supposedly “lied” to the people in order to get elected.

As far as I’m concerned, they did not lie.  In their campaign for the 2011 election they spelled out what they would do in a Labour-led government…a fantasy outcome definitely, but still a noble goal for any political entity.

When transpired was a big increase in seats for Labour but nowhere near enough to lead a government.  So what it came down to was whether or not they went in with the Christian-centre-“right” Fine Gael party.

I believe they were correct to go in with FG.  It was the lesser of two evils.  If we think austerity is bad now imagine what it would have been like if Enda was leading a government with a rag-tag band of mostly right-wing independents.  Either the cutbacks to public services would have been much, much worse or we would have had another general election a lot sooner, one which would hardly have guaranteed to bring any more stability.

So where did Labour go wrong? 

Well first I reckon Joan Burton was shafted by Gilmore and Michael Noonan when the cabinet was put together.  It was similar to that episode in Friends when Phoebe was put in charge of “ice and cups”.  Joan made her name in the Dáil by standing up to the financial sector and I don’t think the “old boys network” wanted her anywhere near the department, but I could be wrong.

For me, Gilmore’s biggest mistake in government was in keeping his head down and allowing himself to be openly attacked in the media from all sides.  This perception that he lied in his campaign snowballed to such an extent that it didn’t matter whether or not it was true…you can see in the election results that the public believed it.

And it didn’t help that not only were the attacks coming from the gagillion splintered parties on the so-called “Irish left”, but there was also plenty of sly digs coming from Fine Gael – not always directly, but often through their media outlet Newstalk, or as I call it, BlueshirtFM.

We live in a 24/7 media age, and what’s more, social media is a perfect way to reach young voters and not only get across the true aims of your party, but also to at least respond to the mud being slung at you from all angles.

Joan Burton may not exactly be young, but she does strike me as the type who would have the savvy to appoint people who can use these resources to restore a party’s lost image. 

Not that her task would be an easy one…during the week I saw a tweet from of all “people” Dustin the Turkey (aka a literal puppet of Fianna Fáil’s own spiritual homeland RTE) where he used the hashtag #JoanBrutal.  It’s one thing coming from an individual but I don’t understand why there wasn’t a bigger outcry telling Dustin to keep his beak out.

Ideally, the biggest change I would make to the Labour Party would be in name.  I have nothing against unions whatsoever, but they can’t define a political party if it has realistically aims to form an Irish government. 

As I have already said in this post our anti-establishment politicians are too splintered and need to be brought together somehow – we need an Irish version of the US Democratic Party, because the Irish version of the UK Labour one just isn’t cutting it.

But for now, I’ll make do with a change of leadership, once there’s a major change of attitude that goes along with it. JLP

Update 12noon Sunday June 1 : This tweet from a Dr Tom Clonan* and it is a classic example of the unchallenged attacks on the Labour Party which can be found on all sorts of media.  Remember – my point is not that the attacks are entirely unjustified, it’s just that I rarely see any evidence of the party standing up for itself, neither directly nor indirectly.  As you can see, I took it upon myself to at least challenge his premise.

* = [who describes himself as “Captain (Retired) Irish Times Security Analyst. Writer, Broadcaster & Lecturer in Journalism, Political Comms, DIT All Views My Own – Personal”] I

“I vote (in elections) for the same reason I’d punch a bear that was eating me. I don’t think it would make a big difference to the outcome, but at least that way it wouldn’t look like I want to be eaten by a bear.”

Nick Doody, comedian

I love rugby, which is probably why I run a site on it.  But there’s a good chance that you don’t.  So of course I respect that.

But while I appreciate that it is as much people’s right not to vote as it is for them to actually do it, I don’t have an awful lot of respect for people who simply throw up their hands and say “why should I vote, sure they’re all corrupt”!!!

Of course I fully understand if you don’t want to discuss “politics”.  But despite the impression given by the media, elections are not just about “politics”.  They are about government.  And this is something that affects all of us.

If we have the time to make ourselves experts in rugby, or soap operas, or X Factor, or stamp collecting, or whatever it is we focus on outside the earning of a crust, we should also have the time to have a decent handle on not only who is representing us in government, but also how they’re doing at it.

As far as I’m concerned, the most important statistic emanating from any democratic election for the government of a sovereign nation is not the tally of votes for the individual candidates – rather it is the percentage of the electorate who actually took the time to cast their vote.

There are three simple steps to voting : 1) make sure you are registered 2) engage in the process of finding out who is up for election and what they stand for, and 3) vote.

If you can pay taxes, if you can understand the rules of a sport, if you can keep up with what’s happening on a TV drama show, well let’s face it if you can put together a coherent sentence you can do all of the above steps.

We don’t talk about government enough at the watercooler.  That’s because we’re probably afraid that we can’t do it without discussing politics.

All I’m saying is that if you are eligible to vote in these upcoming elections, please do so, whatever your allegiance.  The more people do, the fewer are the places where the corrupt ones can hide. JLP