Ocean FM recently held a Local Election Radio Debate which I attended & spoke at – https://soundcloud.com/oceanfm/north-west-today-tues-20th-may – the relevant section is from 45 min to 1hr.

I was quite proud of my ‘eureka’ moment where I suggested that there be a three-month training course for all politicians – one month homeless, one month hungry & one month poor – I got great support from the crowd that day!

Since then, I really feel that this type of ‘training’ should be a must for any candidate of the next General Elections. Candidates who ask the citizens to cast their precious vote on them must do more than ‘talk’ – indeed many election candidates have the Gift of the Gab (or Gob!) – but this is no longer enough for us and as we all know ‘actions speak louder than words’.  Every one of us are sick and tired of empty words and broken promises from our leaders.

For us to promote them to power they must first prove they are worthy – this proof could be in the form of them going through the 3 month training idea of mine – How else do these candidates think that they can speak for the homeless, the hungry & the poor if they have never been homeless, hungry or poor?

This training course would also weed out the ‘Me, Myself & I’ Candidates and would leave only those people who are courageous and worthy of consideration. Maybe RTE could cover this Political Training – it would be a most enjoyable experience for voters to have this training streamed to us 24 hours a day for the three months – sort of an ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get me out of Here’ type programme maybe called ‘I’m a Political Candidate – Get me home now’.

This training can commence with immediate effect as we have the best of tutors already in the country, we have numerous homeless, hungry & poor people living among us today. I will tweak up my proposal (white paper) and send it in to Leinster House in the coming weeks – after all this current FG / LAB regime have lost the run of themselves and someone needs to help stop the madness.