[ILP] Congress Elections
Liam Tatlock
On the cusp of another set of Congress elections and I thought it appropriate to lay out the Independent Labour Party's stance.
First and foremost, we have always been a party that likes to give youth a chance and, despite our generosity being abused in the past, that is a stance we will always maintain, so anyone with leftist leanings can join us and will always be considered for Congress, if that is the route they want to take.
Immigration
We would like to see a return of the Immigration Committee to guide those Congress members from all parties, rather than to just rely on one opinion. It worked quite well in the past, so we would be happy to back it in the future. In recent years, the country has never had a serious problem with overseas takeovers and non-Irish players are welcome with the sole proviso that they have the interests of the country at heart.
Responsibility
We would always recommend to members that they discuss potential proposals before setting them and all are more than welcome to ask senior members their opinion on important, or any, votes. You are welcome to ask questions in the relevant Congress thread, party Congress thread or to any individual member, though it is normally sensible to ask in a thread where more than one opinion is available.
Friends and foes
With the world situation as it is, the country declaring war right now seems unlikely, though we would expect any Congress members to discuss any proposal sensibly. Of more import is to maintain sufficient MPPs to give us our fill of combat and, as in the past, discussion on any potential ally is encouraged and welcomed.
In brief, members are, and have been in the past, loyal, responsible and active and long may that continue. Good luck to all candidates tomorrow and let's put the ILP back where it belongs as the forerunner of politics in Ireland.
Comments
To be honest there is no point of having an immigration committee while the Foreign Affairs department should be competent enough to handle it themselves. They have the international experience and knowledge so why not have them handle it?
Simply because one person brings their own prejudices into play, sometimes without even realising it so a committee of different views brings a more balanced decision.
If you want a non biased opinion then the foreign affairs ministry would discuss with it with the CP, Dail and Cabinet. Maybe even Party Presidents as well as citizenship passes are always based on politicial decisions.
One of the arguments in favour of a committee is that it lessens the impact of political parties just letting their friends in. If the applicant has no baggage, they'll get in via committee recommendation.
When I was on the Committee for Immigration and we refused people we were given out to and people didn't accept our decisions.
I don't mind a committee but if someone is rejected when there is a party who wants that player in, we are going to run into difficulty
I remember the occasional problem. Unfortunately the game doesn't allow for a mechanism to block passes being given out that are deemed dodgy. It's not a perfect system, but it generally worked OK
Conway speaks of time when his commitee lied about reasons to reject croatian player.
And fact that people like conway who openly betrayed Ireland got irish cz only speaks about congress filth who accept enemies of ireland.
The power to accept applicants is in the hands of congresspeople, the problem with a committee as opposed to a Minister is that it does not have the executive authority to approve or condemn a congressperson for accepting or rejecting a person.
And there is no such thing as objective opinion on immigration anyway, we're looking for a certain type of player and since we don't have that many passes, we have to be choosey about who we bring in.
I agree with Lliamm in that a single person in charge of immigration is usually biased. But the truth is that so are committees. And, as others have already pointed out, there is really nothing the government can do to stop parties or individual congress members from letting in who they want anyway. Immigration is, after all, a power of congress according to game mechanics. That is why ministers and even committees who try to control immigration always end up causing so many problems – because they are stepping on the toes of the people who were actually elected to do the job.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not arguing for open immigration. I just think the responsibility of immigration should be in the hands of those who actually have any coercive power over congress members – party presidents. CS granting reflects on the collective reputation of their party, so any PP with any brains will keep a tight reign on CS granting in their party. If they don’t, those parties shouldn't be voted for during congress time. They may get some votes, but they certainly won’t get as many as if they had a responsible CS policy.
All we need to do is make sure the PPs know what is expected of them, and keep PPs honest to the public by publishing a monthly run-down of cs acceptances by party. The government can still take an advisory role by pointing out potential dangers to congress/PPs, and singling out parties that ignore this advice, but the responsibility should ultimately be with PPs and the voting public. It is the only logical solution. It wouldn't be perfect, of course, but it sure would be better than anything we have tried so far. And last year the public showed overwhelming support for such a system in one of my polls. Yet it was never tried. So what exactly are we waiting for??
I may be proved wrong here, but the bigger parties get most of their votes from party members anyway so the threat of losing votes at election time is limited. One of my arguments in favour of a committee is that they put in the research on applications that a lot of Congress members won't do. Now, you can argue that congressmen should never grant CS to anyone without checking their history, but that's unlikely to happen for everyone, hence the benefit of the committee which is more unbiased if it's a cross-party one.
Ministers have coercive power over congresspeople in a moral sense.
"the country has never had a serious problem with overseas takeovers and non-Irish players are welcome with the sole proviso that they have the interests of the country at heart."
i recognize myself in this.
This is sorta untrue though, there are at least three specific instances in eIrish history where we've been under significant PTO threat, two of those where the PTOers actually took control.
i am not a PTOer lol 😁"
I read your story so i know ireland was threatened by a PTO.
When in Rome, do as the romans do.
Voted 🙂
Viva ILP!