You’d be forgiven for thinking there were not 437,000 people on the live register given the last ten days of fightbacks, distractions, chicken impressions (Mary Hanafin) and the rest.   Now Dara Calleary (next leader of FF though I don’t see the draw myself)  today was anxious to talk about the 1250 jobs that were announced in the past week. They include 1050 that may be delivered by Intel who of course are benefitting from the generous corporate tax rates.  (850 of those jobs are temporary but we won’t let that fact get in the way of  a FF press release.)

Expect much jumping about and press releasing of every job created or should that be announced between now and the election. Batt O’Keeffe specialises in that.  I do regret not keeping a tally of the jobs he has announced since he took up the role of Minster for Enterprise and Employment.  He would not be the first minister to announce jobs that never saw the light of day but a fact check would be very useful.  We still don’t have any big plan for job creation by this government except for pointing quietly to the corporate tax rate or indeed letting Sarkozy do the advertising for us!  It is as though these job announcements are arriving despite the government and nobody is counting the numbers leaving except through a slight reduction in the unemployed.

Another issue which is becoming a grower amongst the electorate is the Universal Social Charge.  Pay slips are being examined and people are realising how it together with the cut in the minimum wage will be impacting them. Those on pensions and those in receipt of medical cards are going to feel the hit particularly hard.  It’s all very well having those illustrations of the impact at budget time but it does not become real until it is actually not there in the pocket. One candidate returning from a canvass called the USC the ‘silent tax’, the point being that many were paying the levies before but many were protected until the name change and the application to all those in receipt of earned income.

There are many other issues which I don’t believe get discussed or debated enough due to the preoccupation with ECB/IMF and recovery plans or the instruction to find good news or spend seemingly endless amounts of time debating political reform.  (I’m so over reactionary debates calling for cutting the numbers of TD’s,  scrapping the Seanad or tampering with the voting systems. It does not mean I don’t personally want to see change, I’m simply fed up of the elitism and the lack of inclusion of voices from local communities and those traditionally excluded from political debate and decision-making.)

Emigration, the cost of living, the impact of lower incomes on the health of people, the lack of rights based legislation and policies for people with disabilities.  These are not simply the topics of a woeful Paddy O’Gorman feature or Liveline.   They are put in those boxes and everyone else says lets talk about some airy fairy idea about how things might be changed on the voting system yet the former impacts on people so acutely and will arise on the doorsteps and cause the anger at the ballot boxes.

What other issues are we talking about or hearing in our communities which don’t form part of what some decide is the national discourse? 

photo credit: Adam NFK Smith

One issue I have been thinking about is whether there really is a link between the opening of Cash for Gold shops and burglary.  A good few  anecdotal replies when I raised this on twitter and a lot of talk about it in the Oireachtas but I have yet to see crime figures on it or action from the Gardai or the Department of Justice.  Neither do I see much reflection from the politicians press releasing that many people are selling their valuables in order to pay for the basics.   Or a debate on the general understanding that there is a link between recession and a rise in crime and that the issue is much broader than this but maybe Cash for Gold is so much easier as a press release handle.

Meanwhile.