Can We Get This Kind of Policy Reporting?

So, as I’m sure you’re aware, the first round of the Presidential elections in France are at the end of this week. I wanted to get a better idea of what the main candidates stood for and I found this excellent piece in Le Monde.

If you get the Google Translate plugin in Chrome and view it there you can a decent(ish) translation of it.

I’d love if we had this kind of reporting of policies in the Irish General Election. Yeah, I know it’s a completely different system. But just imagine instead of faces of candidates you had the badges of all the main parties and alliances. Yeah, I know we’ve lots of independents… But imagine if you could quickly see where all the different parties stood on all the various issues that matter. This is exactly the kind of reporting I want to see on Irish politics – with a strong a focus on policies.

Yeah, I know it’s just one piece – but in fairness this one piece seems to cover all you need to know. And obviously it takes a lot of work, I’d imagine a whole team of people… Please can we have something like this here?

Don’t get me wrong, the reporting is good here – it’s just sometimes it seems like way too much attention is paid to the power plays between and inside parties/politicians rather than on what really matters – their policies.

And about the election…

Obviously I don’t support Le Pen. Although she’s a cuddly cute liberal in comparison to Dupont-Aignan – who I only found out about by reading the Le Monde piece – he’s not got much support though.

I’m not too sure what to say about Le Pen. Or why even bother. It’s not like I’m going to sway anyone’s mind. I’d imagine if some FN supporter happened to stumble onto twimii they’d just be like “oh que ses opinions sont mignonnes… cet espèce de folle” and I’d be like “yeah, well maybe I am crazy-” and they’d be like “carrément” … “yeah well at least I’m not daft enough to fall for threadbare policies wrapped in a shiny banner emblazoned with the words ‘Ireland for the Irish'” … “Aussi bête que folle” … “I’m no genius but at least I know which way is up” … and on it would go…

Actually I’ve met FN supporters and – to be honest – they were very sound. Apart from when the subject of Islam or Muslims came up.

I believe in voting for policies not people – and I don’t see how anyone who thinks like this could vote FN. I don’t believe Marine Le Pen will be the next President of France. I think Francois Fillon is going to win it. He has support among older voters so … I don’t know I think he’s going to win it. I have been wrong about absolutely everything since Brexit – so what do I know…

After reading through the different candidates policies if I had a vote I’d be voting for Benoît Hamon – so I’m completely out of step with French electorate. I’d actually be quite enthusiastic about some of his policies.

And obviously I like a lot of Philippe Poutou’s stances on things – he’s not got much support but he got some positive attention after one of the debates – real old-school French socialist-worker stuff. It’s hard not to like…

But at the end of the day – n’importe qui sauf Le Pen (et Dupont-Aignan bien entendu).

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I wonder if there’ll be something like this in one of the British newspapers for the upcoming elections. Be good, wouldn’t it?

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Emmanuel Macron came first with Le Pen coming second. The final vote is on May 7th. Hopefully Macron will hold the lead.

Macron won. Thank God. Merci la France!