Letter to Madam

Billy Bragg, British musician and activist, at...
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Madam,
Repeated calls for a national government betray the lack of understanding on the part of some of the electorate that politics is about more than just personalities and who sits around the cabinet table. It’s meant to be about policies too. The clue is in the spelling of both words.
The choice offered at the next general election must be about what direction we, as a nation, will go in; not simply who will be the driver and how far we need to travel. The refrain, from Vincent Browne and others, that simply because there is broad agreement that we need to close a gap of, say, €3 Billion in Budget 2011 must mean there is not a whit of difference between any of the parties is utterly untrue. Agreeing to travel 10 miles isn’t the same as agreeing in what direction the journey would be in, nor by what means we will do so. Politics is about the “how” of public life and merely repeating statements of goals, ambitions, targets and aspirations, as some do, does not a policy make.
In the election to come, all parties need to be honest and open about what their approach will be once in government. That process of openness and honesty must start with the opening up of publicly held information about the state of the day to day finances of the nation. And when it comes to voting the public must step up to the mark and not simply pick, what appears on the surface to be, the cheapest or easiest option.
Yours, yada, yada blah blah etc.
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