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What are the reasons we are falling behind on Nice?

category national | miscellaneous | news report author Thursday October 17, 2002 21:30author by Not to reason why

Will the left even bother to analyse this?

Of course not, because LAN excluded, they fought lousy half hearted campaigns. Most posters were poor, leaflets said nothing about the real issues.

Envirnmental issues, Nuclear power, CAP or food mountains was never even discussed. Older people were never told what the EU intends to do with pension privatisation in the very near future. The EU has cast its greedy eyes on ‘solving’ what they call “the pensions time Bomb” Younger people were not enlightened about the connection between ‘intellectual’ property and the banning of Napster and music file sharing, of course the ‘scientific socialists’ of the SWP don’t have time to listen to music and illegal music at that! Disgraceful carry on all together, even anarchic. Most Groups totally ignored the ‘Jobs’ issue, even though opinion polls were clearly showing that this hoary old issue has resurfaced once more with the collapse of the celtic tiger. Ff have posters almost everywhere with jobs plastered on them.

Among the most loony half baked stunts was the Irish Anti War movement going on a weekend trip to Shannon in order to get 1 minute of tv publicity, when they could have got loads of press coverage through their (unpublicised) anti Nice position, if they had bothered to do a bit of half decent press work. The biggest failing was not coming up with an effective way to expose the Yes propaganda emanating from RTE, THE tabloids and the ref con, and I don’t mean the once off picket, which was just ignored.

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author by Why no reasonpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 00:04author address author phone

And wise and intelligent.
You know exactly what needs to be done.
I wonder you're not running the country.
If you could stop wanking in front of your computer that is....

author by ignorance is blisspublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 01:43author address author phone

While I do not agree with all the points made by the original writer. The 2nd writer 'Why no reason' actually addressed none of them! He sounds a bit like the yes side in Nice: raise irrevelant points and try to confuse the public, on the other hand it could very well be a trotskyist 'get the man not the ball' tactic

author by Justin Moran - Sinn Feinpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 10:24author email maigh_nuad at yahoo dot comauthor address author phone


The points are crap. I reckon this might have had something to do with the first respondents statement. The No side has been much better this time round. So has the Yes side unfortunately. As for being behind, it never ceases to amaze me the faith 'revolutionaries' put in opinion polls. They got it wrong last time as well. In fact at this stage last time the No vote was 17 points behind. Now we're 13 points behind. Hey look, we've gained four points. :)

The Left has fought a good campaign. It might not be enough but our opponenets have every advantage except in on the ground work.

You say LAN fought the best campaign. I disagree, though I think they did tremendously well, but really, how fucking far do you think the No campaign would have got without the Greens? Without us? Without Joe Higgins bringing the Alliance Against Nice together? Perhaps one of the other reasons the post wasn't answered by the first respondent was that this is some gobshite trolling because the idea that anyone could be so devoid of political reality and yet capable of posting is somewhat unnerving.

author by Andrewpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 11:38author address author phone

I'm not sure quite what the motives are behind these posts which seem to crop up on a daily basis. While I think the LAN material was the best in terms of the arguments made its rather obvious that a huge amount of work was put in by the Green Party and Sinn Fein.

I do think AAN was a bit of a damp squib in terms of on the ground work but it did manage to generate some press coverage (indeed I put a couple of media enqueries on touch with AAN (cause they wanted someone 'famous')).

Related Link: http://more.at/stopnice
author by Justin Moran - Sinn Feinpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 12:53author email maigh_nuad at yahoo dot comauthor address author phone

HAH! Some-one famous :)

Anyway, I think the AAN was a positive development in terms of media representation. I think it also played a small but crucial part in bringing Article 133 out in the open, though in my opinion the lion's share of the credit for that goes to Eamonn Crudden, Barry Finnegan at all at the Article 133 Committee who did a ridiculous amount of work on it.

Still, AAN got some media coverage and several tens of thousands of leaflets out. I don't think a broad left united campaign was ever, despite what some of the Alliance might have wanted, on the cards. And, as some-one pointed out in a previous thread on Nice, just getting a variety of groups, many of which may have low opinions of some of their erstwhile allies, together without a feud/split/blazing row is a positive thing over all, especially considering the pittance it was run on. If memory serves most groups and TDs put in 200 Euros and a few of the smaller ones 100 Euros. I doubt there was two and a half grand all told.

author by Andrewpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 13:07author address author phone

'two and a half grand', 'two and a half grand', I wish we had 'two and a half grand'. We had to lick tarmac off road etc...

author by IMC Dalekpublication date Fri Oct 18, 2002 16:02author address author phone

I blame william Finnerty

author by another loserpublication date Mon Oct 21, 2002 21:28author address author phone

Seeing the way IMC Dalek and others above answered the question:

What are the reasons we are falling behind on Nice?


Its small wonder we only convinced 5000 out of around 450,000 new voters!



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