But remember msm aim and ym

Or they can try to organise their own counter-campaign, to raise the possibility of one of those policies that lobbyists made earlier costing FF or FG actual votes

That can sometimes work, but an insulation of living inside walled cities is that those inside them tend to only hear people like them

There are ways that people outside those established walls can force change.

They can, for example, insist on the Government following the law.

And the Govt are trying to stop that from happening by restricting judicial review.

This is the malaise in Ireland’s democracy.

A Democracy where politicians are in constant office, but do not respond to citizens’ wishes (or even just their own voters’ interests) but just advance the policies that suit monied lobbies is a disaffection machine.

Because people lose hope.

When Patrick O’Donovan unveiled his underbaked pie of an Internet policy giving Meta what it wanted, it was because they are inside the walls, just as powerful (but less visible) than the farm lobby.

Meanwhile established lobby groups, long inside the walls, can say “Ireland should use a chunk of its EU political capital to get a nitrates derogation so dairy farmers don’t have to change.”

Most Irish people are not dairy farmers, and would prefer clean rivers

www.antaisce.org/news/eu-nitr...

But this power isn’t available to just anyone. The two civil war parties recognise that certain interests are inside the walls and some are outside.

Being located in the liberties, people and groups outside the FF-FG walled cities can say heterodox things like “I think children are people too”.

One of the evident failures of the FF and FG party candidates in the Presidential election was their inability to articulate what either party was for.

These are hollow vessels, whose policies are largely set by outside forces.

An organised external lobby can simply slot their preferred policy in

Now, the consequences of the Minister’s ideas would be pretty terrible. Elon Musk would be plugged into the state database built on our PPS numbers, for example.

But what it demonstrates is that the power to make a policy and then see a government adopt it largely sits outside of political parties.

And, given the fact that the register of lobbyists features a record of the same Minister being lobbied by Facebook on this exact plan a few weeks ago, I think we may safely let the Magi know they will be spared a trek to Limerick this year.

www.lobbying.ie/return/13174...

Patrick O’Donovan went out on the national airwaves with a half-baked, bad set of ideas about linking access to online spaces to our PPS numbers.

If he had these ideas himself, it would be a Christmas miracle.

But in fact, they are the Zuckerberg lobbying aim across the world.