Only a fool meddles with a system that is producing good outcomes
If one candidate wins it bigly, then the other will obviously demand more debates, but the victor will have no incentive whatsoever to agree to them.
If it’s just another political memoir about climbing the greasy pole and getting bored once you reach the top, then we can toss it in the “I might read that later” column, with all the other political memoirs.
In modern democracies, political offices are just one of a whole series of interlocking institutions that wield political power. Capturing one of them is not enough. There are no shortcuts.
We have a bizarre situation where the next Government will be bound – at least to some degree – by major spending decisions taken in the dying days of this one.
Also: Fintan O’Toole’s extraordinary attack on cataract busses.
Politicians have both a political and economic incentive to tell you that everything is fine, until it isn’t. It’s not lying, necessarily – but it might just be unwarranted optimism.
Would we grant that level of benefit of the doubt to some working class white guy from Alabama who tweeted that Barack Obama was a Kenyan?
We are supposed to treat accused people with the presumption of innocence – or in other words the presumption that they have been wrongly accused.
Aren’t we all adults? If somebody is willing to spend €415 on a concert ticket to hear songs that have been on the radio for thirty years, shouldn’t they have that right?
You might argue – might – that €350,000 is an amount of money that should be below the notice of Ministers, but you’d be making an argument that only an idiot should believe.
“A home of your own” amounts to an enormous public works programme in a sector of the economy already boasting full employment.