Election Debate!

Braighni wrote:

They did argue about Bertie's promise to have a metro to Dublin Airport by 2007.

I didn't see it all. Caught the tail end of it.

I thought Kenny was credible (imho). A big improvement over his "people think I'm not serious, I'm very serious" waffle a week back.

He could run the country as well/poorly as the next guy/previous guy.

I didn't realise they even spoke about transport til this morning but it was at the end and I think I was dozing off by then cos it was SO fucking boring.

Thing is, I don't fall for the 'Bertie's been Taoiseach for so long and Kenny has very little experience at this debating thing' argument cos Kenny's been the opposition for HOW long now? Surely he went to Trinity or UCD or something? He should be WELL used to debating. I mean they could pick anyone out of the debating society at Trinity and they'd do a much better job than he did last night... so I don't get it. It was obvious he was only prepared to talk about certain things and was banking on them being the main part of the debate, which they were, but Bertie caught him out on quite a lot of things... like building 5 hospitals and how he's gonna do it? By cutting back on everything else. Or he couldn't really answer how the budget would pay for all the promises FG and Labour are making. And he was caught out on the crime stats and taxation. He wasn't able to answer questions where it was clear he hadn't really planned for them.

But then again, it's just my opinion. We discussed it at breakfast here and most thought that Bertie won that one by a mile. I don't know if Kenny did enough to sway the undecideds.

Thing about this election is that a lot of the middle aged people (who they seem to be campaigning towards) are pretty disillusioned and don't seem to want to vote. A lot of younger people seem more interested in the whole thing... so I think the likes of the Greens and SF :eek: could have more of a say in how things go.

evenkat wrote:

It wasn't shown on TV here but I think health and education are big issues even if they don't seem to affect you directly right now, they will in the long run just as the environment and globalization.

Still can't figure out how to pronounce the word Taoiseach...that's another word I'm going to make you say in Chicago

'Tee-Shock' see... easy enough

Anyway, yep, I see your points about health and education and I totally understand that but there's enough people going nuts about both. I want answers to other stuff... after all, a government is much more than a ministry for health and education... I still can't understand how, after we've been rich for so long now, Ireland would be well and truly fucked if it weren't for foreign investment... surely they should have used a substantial amount of that money to somehow ensure the world at large doesn't affect our economy so much. Our economy should be much more reliant on Irish goods and services. Sure, we have a big export market but that's all multinational stuff we're exporting. It's quite worrying.

Jeanie wrote:

It's gaelic right? I'm still trying to work it out!!

Hels told me and she reckons it's Chinese to her!! So I reckon I'm screwed!

Although, I've always wanted to learn it, coz I know that some of the ancestors spoke it at some point, but I can see why they gave up!!

I wanna learn it too I have school level of Irish, which is really really bad and I've been meaning to learn it for a few years now... I'll get around to it eventually.

My aunt started learning it when she was about 50ish and she's fluent now and her and her boyfriend just talk in Irish all the time... well she's a millionnaire and took early retirement so she went and got a degree in it and stuff