#election11 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

desmondjdoyle-blog · 13 years ago

Text

Dylan Haskins Interview for stylesiren.ie 7th Feb 2011

Des Doyle Interviews Dylan Haskins, Independent Candidate for Dublin South East in February 25th’s General Election.

When I meet Dylan Haskins at 3pm on a wet and windy Friday afternoon at the entrance of The Morgan in Temple Bar, he is intently busy on his iphone, probably tweeting. If it’s possible the 23 year old looks younger in person than he does on his posters. By the end of the interview I realise the old saying of looks can be deceiving rings true.

He orders a regular white coffee and we sit. I notice he is sporting his now trademark brown winkle pickers, I faux scratch my leg to see if he notices that I too am wearing not dissimilar winkle pickers, its goes unnoticed. I’m a little disappointed but my disappointment ends there.

Have you always been interested in politics? Yeah, always but not in the conventional way like joining a youth party, going into student politics and then making the final transition to traditional party politics. I never really thought of being a politician as such, I only decided to run for this election in December, it just felt like the right thing to do.

Why not the conventional way? I’ve always been very independent and had a DIY mentality, I try to speak from the heart about what I think about things and I’ll change my mind according to what makes sense at the time, I’d hate to have my views influenced by a political party manifesto or a chief whip that would try to sway my views. It would it be against what I stand for.

So are you saying, at 23 years old that you can say right here that you’ll never join a political party? I’ll never join any of the established political parties but maybe if a new wave party came along with modern policies and views then perhaps. But I don’t think you have to give every movement a name, I just see that as retrospective branding.

Your mission statement is ‘to restore faith in our political system’, what do you mean? Restoring faith relates to reforming politics, it’s about going to the root of the problem and to try and find the simplest way of changing for the better. Good communication and transparency conquers most problems and over time it seems our politicians and government organisations have lost their way in this regard. You can apply creative thinking to the economics of the country and the way our society works. Creativity is crucial to Ireland’s recovery.

Transparency is very important to you? Huge! Transparency should go through every aspect of decision making. Decisions should be made as close to the people they effect as possible and without transparency that cannot be done. I think that by moving towards being completely open and seeing what the options are at your disposal, that’s the best starting point for reform.

You have a tough competition in your constituency for the elections in the form of Creighton (Fine Gail) , Quinn (Labour) , Andrews (Fine Fail) and Gormley (Greens), is there any you see a specific threat from? I don’t care who I beat as long as I get a seat! Gormley and Andrews have been in government and I feel they’ve had their chance and we’ve seen the consequences….

As Haskins delivers this my mind drifts. I can’t help feel a little envious of this man who is five years my junior. He has already a CV to die for. Setting up gigs in Greystones as a teenager, founding ‘The Hideway’ which was a creative hot bed for underground music in Dublin, directing the documentary ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ which garnered International attention, not to mention his broadcasting career with RTE where he interviewed high profile artists such as Marina & the Diamonds, Jools Holland and Richard Hawley amongst others. When I was his age I was sitting on my couch in my student flat in Rathmines getting stoned playing Football Manager, while simultaneously watching repeats of Jeremy Kyle, which believe it or not doesn’t take a huge amount of effort, it’s hard not to feel a bit inadequate.

Last year he was assistant director for the acclaimed ‘Heroin’ which was part of the Dublin Fringe Festival last summer. This leads me to my next question.

Another thing you disagreed with was the legislation on head shops last year, what would you’ve done differently? First of all, the legislation against head shops didn’t happen because some TD’s thought it was an important issue, it was because it was on Joe Duffy! Successive Irish governments have stayed away from having any in-depth debate about the drugs policy. It takes courage to step back from the populous stance and say ‘let’s talk about the about the bigger picture here’. It was said that these head shops were corrupting the youth of the country but markets supply demand and if these shops were springing all over the country the question should have been, what can we do to stop the youth from feeling the need to take this stuff instead of let’s try and get rid of this problem by closing these shops.

Have you ever tried any illegal drugs? To be honest, no I haven’t. I’ve just never been attracted to it and most of my energy was in organising things like gigs or whatever so maybe I was just too busy! I think its boredom that maybe makes people ‘use’ and I’ve always been busy and happy but saying that, maybe I need to try it to know for sure (he laughs).

_____________________________________________________________

Haskins is wearing a blue pinstripe shirt buttoned to the top which is complemented by skinny grey trousers and ‘those’ dark brown winkle pickers….

Regarding your style, it’s unique, especially in the land of Irish politics, what’s it influenced by? You look very like the lead singer of ‘Hurts’ Theo Hutchcraft! I’ve been getting that loads recently! I’m actually a bit of an aul’ fella at heart and I like etiquette (he laughs). But I do like new stuff too.

Where do you clothes shop in Dublin? It depends on how much money I have which at the moment is not a lot! I don’t really have any significant loyalty to certain shops. Like this shirt is from Zara, trousers from Uniqlo and the shoes are Ted Baker, I need a new pair, I’ve had them for a year.

Are you listening to any specific band or artist at the moment? I’m listening to Anna Calvi on repeat, I saw her play in Dingle at ‘Other Voices’. That girl can shred a guitar! Other than that I listen to stuff that relaxes me like The XX, Warpaint or Kanye’s new album, I actually contemplated plagiarising some of his lyrics as a campaign slogan. His lyrics are ‘First things first, I’ll fix your brains’, I was going to change it to ‘first things first, I’ll fix your drains’!

Most politicians have the difficulty of convincing young people to vote, paradoxically you have the opposite challenge of convincing the older voter. How are you going to do that? You do that by going to where they’re listening, like the radio and more importantly on their doorsteps, speaking to them about what I believe is good for the city. I want them to listen to what I’m saying not how young I look.

Did you ever think of making yourself look older in you campaign posters? I told them to definitely keep the few wrinkles I have below my eyes, so I was anti-airbrushing!

And finally, if you were an animal what animal would you be? A fox! (he answers without any hesitation) I have a weird affinity with them, I see them at stages in my life and I think sometimes it might be a sign. But now that you bring it up I haven’t seen one in a while, maybe I should be worried!

_____________________________________________________________

Personally I don’t think Haskins has any need to fret. He genuinely wants to work hard to make our society a better place while using himself in an unselfish way as a political template for other young people to follow and to shun the decades old civil war politics mentality, one of his moto’s is ‘if I can do it, you can do it too’, it’s inspiring. His star has been quietly rising for years and one suspects his star will see its biggest and loudest spike to date on the 25th. His odds in Paddy Power have been slashed from 50-1 to 12-1. I know who my money is on…

#dylanhaskins #election11 #desdoyle

0 notes