The ‘myth’ of economic pain and a grateful public… oh, and some thoughts about whether the public is aware of the ‘economic reality’… July 4, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.6 comments
Reading Stephen Collins this morning I was reminded of a conversation I had during the week with an acquaintance in the Green Party. First though, what did Collins say?
Whether the €200 second homes tax should apply to mobile homes is utterly trivial in the scale of things, but the heat generated on the issue was a chilling reflection of how many people are still living in a fantasy world where economic reality has no place.
The report of An Bord Snip Nua, as the Expenditure Review Committee has become known, will be the first signpost pointing to the scale of the task ahead. While there has been talk of €5 billion in cuts next year, most people find such large numbers hard to grasp. It is only when the practical detail is spelt out that voters will realise what is going to happen. That’s when the screaming will start.
There is, in fairness, an element of truth about this. Whatever way things develop the reality is we do face a crisis and there are decisions that have to be made as to how to combat this. Taxes will, of necessity, increase, and indeed if the path the government seems set upon is taken then we will see cuts.
The problem, as ever, is that Collins limits the options radically as regards the space for movement by the Government.
While publication will inevitably stir up controversy and give hostages to fortune by enabling pressure groups to mount opposition to many of the specific proposals, there is a lot to be said for getting the report out in the open as quickly as possible.
For a start, it might help to wake the public up to the reality of the choices faced by the Government. The Fianna Fáil-Green Coalition will, meanwhile, have the luxury of being able to say it is not committed to accepting any particular cut until budget decisions are made later in the year. It should also put pressure on the Opposition parties, to say what aspects of the report they would accept. So far, the main Opposition parties have been able to make political capital out of the Coalition’s difficulties, without offering alternative policies. Fine Gael has given broad brush strokes focused on spending cuts rather than tax increases, but has not spelt out the details, while Labour has mainly relied on denouncing every Government initiative.
And he continues…
A feature of the public response to date is that there has been far less resistance to income tax increases than spending cuts. The irony is that while the Government itself knows that the future prosperity of the country requires that the emphasis be placed on getting public spending under control, the softer political option is simply to dip into peoples’ pockets for more income tax.
The ’softer’ political option? It’s hard to think of a more unlikely phrase, isn’t it?After a decade or two of rigid adherence to tax cutting and a fear so great amongst the political classes that even the Labour Party – the Labour Party! – was forced in 2007 to introducing a policy of cutting the lowest rate to 18%.
That must seem odd to him, at least, given his cheerleading over the years for the tax cuts by the Progressive Democrats and others. They might have thought that their ideological preference was now entirely embedded. But as we’ve seen it’s not, or not entirely. That people might find tax increases more palatable than spending cuts which will incur cuts in services and provision is hardly that odd given rapidly rising unemployment where more and more – yea, verily, even of the middle classes – are finding themselves nearing dependence upon those very services and provisions. Suddenly talk of cutting welfare rates seems a little too close to home. Child benefit cuts in the context of wages that have decreased radically since the 2008 Budget are no joke, and so forth.
Indeed, one might argue that it is Collins who seems if anything unaware of the reality that those of us who still have pay cheques coming in weekly or monthly face as we see their value collapse and the prospect of worse to come. I mean, how insulated does one have to be from the very palpable fear that is abroad about how bad the situation is becoming on a personal level for most people in this state that one can glibly talk about ‘living in a fantasy world where economic reality has no place’?
Or perhaps people are intuitively coming to a conclusion as to their preference for how this should pan out and what policy measures should be taken, and it just so happens it isn’t his.
Is it that he can only believe the ‘medicine’ is working if there are protests in the street? Is this the yardstick he seeks?
I’ve stated before that there’s a balance here, that some reforms to our public sector are reasonable, that some expenditures are worth examining closely and stopping where appropriate, but at root if we want services we have to pay for them. And it seems that perhaps that message is getting through.
But let’s detach the issue of whether public expenditure control is the central and pressing problem we (or to put it his way, the emphasis must be on it to secure our future prosperity) face from this discussion for another time, not least because Collins himself admits that…
As well as cutting back on spending, there is a strong case to be made for raising more revenue for the exchequer by broadening the tax base. However, if the paltry second home tax is anything to go by, a genuine property tax will provoke the same kind of resistance as spending cuts, particularly if it is designed to raise a significant amount of money.
The report of the Commission on Taxation, which is expected to recommend a property tax, among other things, will form the second prong of the Government’s approach; its report is expected at the end of the month. Along with the spending cuts report, it should help to frame debate going into the autumn, and preparation of the critical 2010 budget.
Yeah, so he’ll stomach tax increases, but to him there’s still only one game in town. Well. We’ll see.
He makes though, a rather good point about the junior partner in government…
Another important element that will feed into budget considerations is the review of the programme for government, on which the Greens are placing a great deal of emphasis. There is an assumption in Fianna Fáil that the Greens will hang in there no matter what, but there have been clear signals that the junior Coalition party is considering all its options.
The decision by the Green leadership to consult party members indicates a willingness to raise the stakes. The problem is that once members are given a say, they may not be all that easy to control. Polls have shown Green voters very unhappy with the Government. This is bound to have rubbed off on a significant number of party members.
The dilemma faced by the Greens is that while they could face a wipe-out in an early general election, the party might cease to exist in all but name if its Ministers sign up to the kind of austerity programme that the country requires in the autumn.
I’m sure I’m misreading him, but is he actually implying that the Green Ministers would go it alone with an ‘austerity’ programme (again, is too he blind to how it is beginning to feel for employed and unemployed people?). Once I’d have said that was unlikely but… now… And indeed I’m not entirely convinced that the GP wouldn’t actually in the majority swing behind the Ministers. Whether though that leads to the same outcome, a wipe-out whether sooner or later is an interesting question in itself.
On that score I was talking to an acquaintance in the Green Party this week and this person suggested that Fianna Fáil after it made the 1987 cuts was actually rewarded for its pains. I pointed out that at the subsequent election it was left in a position where it had, for the first time, to enter an explicit coalition arrangement to which the response was, ‘well it didn’t lose as many seats as it expected’.
Well, that’s true, but I’m not sure it’s terribly useful as a means of gauging their support or that of their policies. What’s interesting is that although opinion polls saw them performing strongly once the campaign was called the health service cuts took precedence locking. Now, they lost 4 seats which was hardly a meltdown, but… there is, perhaps, a more interesting aspect to this because of course the party which most clearly expressed the cuts agenda, the Progressive Democrats saw their numbers fall from 14 to 6 (and it’s worth noting that they had two more seats than the Labour Party in the 1987 election which incredibly pushed Labour into 4th party status on 12 seats). Their decimation would suggest that the appetite for cuts was much lesser than some might think and might also give pause for thought to those who think that smaller parties can somehow buck trends. Indeed, I hope I’m not pushing it when I suggest that a not entirely dissimilar dynamic was apparent at the recent local elections when the Green Party did worse proportionately than Fianna Fáil. I’m aware the utility of the comparison is very very limited. The Progressive Democrats weren’t in power with Fianna Fáil, indeed they were in some respects its most excoriating critics. But by the same token they did pursue the supposed orthodoxy with greatest enthusiasm.
And here’s a further curiosity. It wasn’t just Labour (and Fine Gael) who benefitted, so too did the Workers’ Party returning 3 more TDs. One has to wonder if a similar dynamic will be evident for Sinn Féin and other left and further left parties at the next election as the ‘reality’ of the cuts takes hold.
So let’s think this through. If the 1987 experience is anything to go by then it appears political parties aren’t rewarded for their ‘courage’ in implementing ‘austerity’ programmes. Quite the opposite. Irish politics, arguably, changed fundamentally with the fracturing of Fianna Fáil as a serious party which could deliver a majority. It has never recovered and the appalling polling and electoral results it has seen in the past twelve months are in a way merely the continuation and exacerbation of that trend. Neither too did the Progressive Democrats. Sure, they went up, they went down. But the underlying direction of their subsequent electoral progress was almost entirely downwards.
I’ll point towards Michael Taft’s thoughts on this period for an economic analysis of the actuality as distinct from the perception.
Oh, one last thing amongst some I’ve talked to in the GP is an odd aversion to the cervical vaccine programme. In part that’s political I suspect, they were badly badly caught out in the backdraft from the Department of Health on that one, and didn’t handle it well. But, political or not, there’s some dark mutterings about the manufacturers of the vaccine, it’s effectivity, the screening programme etc… I guess we’re getting a sense of what price some of them place on preventative medical programmes, these days…
Seven (plus one) for Summer July 4, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....18 comments
I’ve done this before last Summer and the thought struck me that it would be fun to do it again. So here it is. Seven tracks that are providing me with a musical accompaniment to the Summer. They’re not exactly comprehensive, by which I mean some of them stand in for other tracks. So, for example, while I like the Manic Street Preachers song, there are better ones on that album by quite some way. But so far no one has got around to releasing a video on YouTube for them. And while some might say they’re not exactly Summery… well, this is my view of Summer and almost all of them bring to mind the long evenings and/or being at gigs with condensation dripping from the walls somewhere or another.
Manic Street Preachers.
Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
Great chorus and at least an echo of that snarling aggression which fuelled their peak of creativity in the early to mid-1990s – up to the point where Richey died (although I have a soft spot for Know Your Enemy from 2001). Sure, The Holy Bible is better, no question, but this is good, very good indeed and that’s a change after a series of really not so great albums.
All India Radio
Four Three
I could rave about these guys. They’re Australian, electronic and have been around since the late 1990s. They do ambient, television and film scores, pop and even New Order like dance excursions under their side project Big Spaceship. But their work as All India Radio is fantastic. This is a perfect summation on their melancholy take on dance. And for those of us who remember Screen Test with Michael Rodd from the 1970s and in particular the Young Filmakers’ short contributions that rather plastic looking spaceship looks fairly familiar (which is as it should be since one of their number claims to have made Super 8 movies of spaceships back when he was a kid).
Hawkwind
Treadmill
Well, it’s cheesy, it’s almost twenty years old and it does go on a bit, but there’s something about that guitar line that evokes Neil Young’s “Mr Soul”… in a good way. A three minute version would be a treasure. To me.
Doves
Jetstream
The album is neither as consistent nor as listenable as previous efforts, but… it does have its moments. This is 5 or so of them…
Sonic Youth
What We Know
Yeah, Sonic Youth indeed. Kim Gordon is 56. I hope I too am as fleet of foot and have learned to play the guitar (or the bass, I’m not fussy) in thirteen or so years. And while you’re thinking about that think about this… The latest album, The Eternal, is cracking. Riffs, melodies, discordance. Same as it ever was really. And like, say, Motorhead who have ploughed their own similarly individual furrow, you can’t ask for much more than that. Not really.
The Church
Pangaea
Taken from another somewhat disappointing album, #23, like that from Doves. Their latest doesn’t hit the highs of 2003’s Forget Yourself or even the more recent Uninvited, Like the Clouds which was fine albeit a bit Pink Floyd for my tastes (never a good thing). Mid-tempo compositions that leave a bit to be desired, but… there’s something about this track which does the business. Not least the way parts of the chorus reminds me of John Lennon…
Section 25
Looking from a Hilltop
A throwback to Factory’s finest hours. Now, no-one would ever say Section 25 were up there with New Order in the pop stakes, and arguably their more dour earlier side such as Friendly Fires was more effective, but… this’ll do. This’ll do.
Check out the ‘mobile’ phone on the video about 30 seconds in… dear God. It’s great.
And one extra, just for luck…
Blank Dogs
Setting Fire to your House
Speaking of Factory, here’s someone who one suspects really really wished they’d been back there way back then. Or otherwise it’s a pretty high quality pisstake (and consider that this is part of the no-fi or ’shitgaze’ movement… yeah, cool)… Apparently highly popular in New York where Mr. Dog, it’s one man behind the band, is based – and there’s some link to Crystal Stilts. And the video? Somehow New Order videos come to mind. But, gotta love that bassline, lifted almost straight from NO’s Movement.
That and a useful safety message implicit in the song
I’d be interested in others lists…
.
John Waters on queues, Ireland, Rome, whatever… July 3, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.37 comments
An odd piece, but no more than all the rest as The Three Johns used to sing, but still odd, from John Waters in the Irish Times. Our scribe has decided that…
INVITED TO appear on the last Questions and Answers , with a brief to review the 23 years of Irish life since the programme first aired, I went around last week looking for signs of the deeper human trends that emerged in that period. Most changes are obvious: immigration, the fact that murder reports on the news are more likely to be from Dublin than Belfast, mobile phones and so on.
But unless you happen to be married to a Lithuanian, which thus far I am not, immigration is something you encounter in the streets rather than the soul. If I lived in Belfast, it is likely that my soul would be in better shape than it used to be; but, since I live in Dublin, the reverse must be the case.
The mobile phone has seemed to make me less lonely, but also rendered me more pathetic in my visible need for human contact. Having railed against it once with a Luddite fury, I carry it in my fist like a charm and gaze at it in the hope that it will erupt into light.
But the change that has struck me most in the past week or so is only occasionally visible: the rage and jealousy that have emerged on the surface of our society, constantly seeking a target.
Hmmm… this is a curious line, if not entirely, from Waters whose pieces seem to swing between a corrosive bitterness at certain institutions and a near ecstatic appraisal of one facet or another of Irish life with remarkably little space between.
Anyhow, he ‘treats’ us to an anecdote of being in Dublin airport…
Early last Saturday morning, I was in the departures queue at Dublin airport en route to Sicily. The queue, as usual, snaked around the departures hall, seeming to begin in Drumcondra.
In an aeon or two we were in the middle of it. Then, in front of us, a man ducked under the barrier and made for the gates, sliding into the throng. As he did so, a steward shouted at him, but he waved his hand in dismissal and kept going.
The steward went to follow him and then had second thoughts. Instead, he went briefly away and returned with a man in a white shirt, probably his supervisor. They were talking earnestly and the steward gestured and pointed towards the queue in front of us.
Then the white-shirted man ducked into the queue, and soon emerged with his quarry, looking sheepish and wan. Lecturing as they went, the arresting officer – for that is what he was – marched the queue-jumper back to the start of the line, by now at the top of Gardiner Street.
Very good. And by way of contrast…
A few days later, the same thing might have happened to me, except I was in Rome, where queue-jumping is a way of life. I was looking for the queue for the Aer Lingus check-in, just one of a number of queues all seemingly tangled up together in a small hall.
I walked about trying to figure things out, and suddenly, paying attention to the faces all around me, realized that I was surrounded by extremely white-skinned people all glaring angrily at me.
The immediate, instinctive sense I had was that I had died and gone to Purgatory, and faced 30 billion years justifying myself to dead Liveline callers. I wasn’t far out. Quite quickly I realised that I had discovered the middle of the Aer Lingus queue. I slunk back to the end of the line as people tut-tutted and harrumphed around me.
A few minutes later, a second desk was opened and the queue split into two – quite arbitrarily, it seemed – and for some reason our line ended up slightly shorter than the other. A young woman came along and, after a brief assessment, joined our queue. Immediately she was set upon by a woman who was ahead of all of us and tremblingly informed her that the end of the line was “over there”. The young woman stared at her shoes and went obediently over.
Then she realised she was in a queue for the wrong flight, that she was not going to Dublin. I have never seen such relief on a human face.
I doubt that. I really do. But anyhow, those set the scene, so to speak, on his great insight… which is that…
We used not to be like this. We had lives. We did not guard every single bureaucratic regulation with a jealous fury. Once, we might have seen someone jumping a queue and smiled at his brass neck or just thought that perhaps he faced some urgent circumstance.
And he continues…
Once, Ireland was world famous for being a place where everything was not reduced to “ethics” and “equality” and rules.
And the reason for this?
At the heart of this fundamental change in us, I believe, is the way, over the past decade in particular, the State has begun to bear down on citizens in previously inconceivable ways and dip deeper into our pockets to pay for its incompetent attentions. Gradually, this is driving us mad.
It’s cruel, it really is, to suggest that in this matter he should speak for himself. But… perhaps he should… since…
One example: in 1984, when I arrived in Dublin, you could drive your car into the city and encounter nothing more sinister than a “lockhard” who would, in return for a consideration, offer you a parking space as though he had the deeds of it in his pocket, which really contained nothing but a bottle of Asti Spumante.
Nowadays you go in fear of clampers with neither hearts nor souls, automatons of the State moralism intent upon punishment.
This is just one of the subtle and barely comprehended tyrannies that replaced the old kinds – turning us into moralistic bloodhounds who sniff the air for the scent of sinners.
Now, I hate the rare aul’ time stuff. I really do. I’m sure they seem great, but I suspect that may be a function of your age and social status rather than anything intrinsically different about today.
So, this idea that Dublin in 1984 was some sort of paradise is rubbish. Not least because I remember in the late 1970s my parents bemusement at the idea that hardly a decade before people could leave a car unlocked and parked on Grafton Street. Any time. Any time at all.
As for the dear old lockhards. Well frankly if John cared to stroll down to my neck of the woods around match days at Croke Park he’d find them plying their trade, although God knows what is now in their pockets.
But it’s even to counterpose the two, clampers/lockhards… queues in Dublin Airport, our wonderful past when queue jumpers could be admired… that one sees the essential misreading of what are actually fairly obvious phenomena and the oddness is that he glancingly refers to it earlier in his piece with his joke about marriage to a Lithuanian. One sort of wishes he was, it might unleash a sense of fun and less stuff about rage…
This country has had a significant population surge in the past decade and a half, in part made up of returning emigrants, in part made up of new immigrants and in part made up of an increasing birthrate. I don’t recall being in line at Dublin Airport in the late 80s or early 90s with a cheery smile on my lips at someone jumping a queue, instead I remember being there seeing off friends on their way to New York or London, and joining them some years later.
That, inevitably in a public sphere which is underfunded and under-resourced, and when I use the term public sphere I’m quite literally including the public shared communal spaces we transit from home to work or school or play, is going to generate tensions. Anyone who has lived in larger cities such as London or New York will know that simple proximity of masses of people has strikingly obvious outcomes in terms of behaviours. Indeed I was very struck talking to a friend who lives in New York by his observation how post 9/11 a weird (at least in the context of New York) politeness was evident in day to day communication. It didn’t last.
Speaking of 9/11 he does realise how fraught international travel has become, bags checked, bottles discarded, trying to fish keys and coins out of difficult to reach pockets when scanners unhelpfully discover them, and how people tend – for some bizarre reason, no doubt – to dislike any activities outside the norm at airports. I mean even at the best of times many people find just being in an airport waiting for a plane stressful.
And even if none of that were an issue there’s the small issue that jumping queues is discourteous and selfish behaviour. Which makes it puzzling that Waters would have such a laissez faire attitude to it.
The odd thing is that a decade ago, in another column again, he was arguing, having noticed the word ‘please’ excised from signs in the public space, that…
It’s a very subtle thing, but gradually and inexorably, some delicate and under appreciated quality has been eroding in Irish life. And this, I believe, is the root of the missing “please”. I’m not talking about “good manners”, politeness, or even what we call “niceness”. For too long we Irish were far too nice, tugging our forelocks and smiling till our hair fell out and our faces cracked. But this is something both more and less than mere courtesy.
Yeah, but presumably it included courtesy.
Walking around Dublin can be confusing, because sometimes if you smile at or speak to people they look at you like you’re an escaped mental patient, and sometimes if you don’t they speak to you and make you feel bad. This syndrome is causing the disease to spread even to those most disposed towards resisting it.
People in public offices can’t wait to get you off the line. People in shops don’t respond any more to smiles or friendly words. Some people remain warm and friendly in spite of all but these are rapidly becoming a minority.
But that’s entirely different behaviour to the sort of behaviour he now lauds.
And oddly as it happens, overheated as they are, I think his thoughts then are more convincing than his thoughts now.
McCreevy redux July 3, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.3 comments
As an addendum to the piece last weekend about Charlie McCreevy I very grateful to the person who sent me this interview in Hot Press from last year with the man himself…
The economy…
JASON O’TOOLE: Are things going to get worse?
CHARLIE MCCREEVY: We are in for a period of lower and slower economic growth worldwide. I hope the big tsunamis of the financial sector that have occurred – I would like to think that the worst of that is out of the way. I can’t predict that better than anybody else. But the consequences of all this – no matter what’s going to happen in financial areas – are being felt at the moment in the wider economy. We’re going to have a period of slower economic growth – minus economy activity in some countries – for a couple of years. That’s going to have inevitable consequences in terms of high unemployment; greater pressure on the public finances etcetera. That’s an inevitable result of all of this. If you check a year ago, I said that I thought it would happen.Do you think the collapse of our banking system demonstrates that free market economy doesn’t really work?
I don’t think it proves that free market economics don’t work. I think it only proves that everything at some stage goes to excess…But shouldn’t these bank guys be reined in – they got too greedy and too selfish.
Well, it’s not just bank guys! Hold on now! It’s the whole lot of us. [I think not Charlie, I think not] Everybody partook of this. You know what I mean? It’s just the system maybe goes too far. But I don’t think it proves that the free market of economics doesn’t work. I think free market economics creates greater wealth. I’m a great believer that you must create more wealth. You can have differences of opinion as to how you go about doing that – and there are, say, people who believe in having a total socialist approach of doing it. I think that’s a failed economic philosophy. But one thing you have to agree on – you have to create wealth in the first place and then we have a separate debate as to how we should distribute that wealth, so that some people have a very, very total socialism approach, some people have a more free market approach. You need a banking system for the economy to work; whether it’s going to be an economy run on total State control principles or on total free market principals, you do need a banking or money system to make it operate. But I don’t think you can deduce from, say, the problems in the banking system worldwide that free market capitalism doesn’t work.
More on the economy…
In regards to semi-state bodies, do you think that perhaps the likes of Aer Lingus should still be under the government’s control?
I don’t think you can say those industries would be in better shape – or it could be better – if it was still owned by the State. In fact, all the evidence – in my view – would be the opposite. Private business principles are the best ones to operate within. Business will thrive better in private enterprise. But I have always said that there are many incidents where that is not always possible and we should never be prepared for ideological reasons to rule out another type of solution. So, there were many State industries privatised before I was Minister for Finance; there were some done when I was Minister for Finance – Eircom being the biggest one that we did. Since I left the government has partially privatised Aer Lingus. The government now only own 25% of Aer Lingus. So, they adopted a pragmatic approach. Your question is a valid one – whether the enterprises are any better. I don’t think the airline business is any worse on account of Aer Lingus being 75% privatised. The competition in the airline business has been good for everybody. I mean, the ordinary people of Ireland can go places cheaply, where they could never even dream of going when I was growing up.If you look at when Eircom was privatised, only a few months later the shares fell dramatically…
No, it didn’t. It took a year. I think it took 14 months to be precise…But that’s a bit of a disaster?
No, it’s not because – remember in that period of time the German telecom dropped by over 50% as well. Telecom stocks all over Europe were at a peak. We, luckily enough – and I take a little bit of the credit for this – actually sold Eircom into the market at just about the height of the telecom boom. And the next year after that – right around Europe – the market in telecoms went from up there to down there. But markets go like that. We actually got Telecom sold off into the private market at the height of the market. We did the taxpayer very good because we got billions of euros for it.But didn’t ordinary Joe – ordinary Irish citizens – on the street who bought into Telecom at the time lose money on it?
But the ordinary Joe had up to a year he could’ve sold the shares and made a profit [hmmm... okay]. If I remember correctly now, 575,000 people applied for shares. That meant at the time there was 3.1 million people in the country who didn’t apply for shares – and couldn’t afford them, right? The money I got – the State got – for Telecom I put it into, say, the pensioners reserve fund; I paid some debts off, etcetera, and the taxpayers – the ordinary Joe and ordinary Mary – benefited by that. What happened was, the telecoms bubble just dissipated – but it didn’t just happen to the Eircom stock, it happened to all telecoms.
The PDs…
The PDs are in the process of disbanding. They turned into a bad joke in the end, didn’t they?
You must remember that the PDs lasted longer than Sinn Fein/the Workers Party, Democratic Left, Clannna Phoblachta. They have been singularly more successful than any of those parties in what they’ve achieved – and that should be recognised. They lasted over 21 years. They spent a lot of that time in government. They contributed a lot. They are absolutely detested by the Left in Irish life and by a lot of the media, but their achievements should be recognised as well. An objective look at their achievements would prove the things I just said.
The EU…
What do you think of the idea of holding elections for voting in EU commissioners? Shouldn’t the public vote on this rather than having them nominated by the Government?
There were two ideas floating around there for a while. That all of Europe would vote for the President of the Commission and then she or he might pick the individual commissioners. It’s a theoretical utopia. I can’t see that working.
And on Lisbon?
Do you think there will be a second referendum on Lisbon next year?
I don’t know, to tell you the truth. It’s primarily a matter for the Irish government and I’m sure they will have consultations with the EU partners. But the Irish government has been pretty forceful in saying that no decision has been made yet. I’m just an ordinary citizen, who happens to be EU Commissioner. It only falls into my remit as an Irish citizen – it doesn’t even fall into my responsibility as Irish Commissioner. It’s entirely a matter for Brian Cowen and the rest of the Cabinet to judge.But do you not fear that if we don’t sign up to this treaty that Ireland might become isolated?
You must remember that each country had to ratify this particular treaty. If the only answer to the question is ‘yes’, there was no point in putting the question to any of the other 26 countries either. You must remember, this is a club. The rules of the club are being changed. Existing members of the club were asked to agree to the changes in the rules of the club. Ireland – by our own constitution – has to put these questions to referendum of the people. The Irish people said ‘no’. And that decision has to be respected by our European partners as well. There is no provision in the existing treaties to isolate anybody. There is no provision to throw out anybody, unless unanimously all the existing members of the club agreed to throw you out. And I doubt now, or in the future, any Irish government is going to unanimously agree to throw themselves out. So, therefore I think the question is not really the proper one to be addressed.Why?
A – because it’s not correct. B – there is no proper procedure for going that direction. And C – it’s not the right thing to do. It’s not the right thing to say to people. Who came out and voted? 53% of the Irish electorate turned out. I read some interesting post-referendum statistics which suggest that a considerable segment of that 53% were actually people who hadn’t voted in the 2007 Irish General Election. So, therefore people did take the issue very seriously. So, that has to be respected.Metaphorically speaking, you’ve been known for occasionally putting your foot in it…
All over my life (laughs)!Like recently when you said you’d be “insane” to read the Lisbon Treaty. Do you have any regrets about any of these foot-in-mouth comments?
Not one of them even. I came to the view a long, long time ago that there’s enough people being cute and everything else. “Don’t say this!” and “Don’t say that!” It’s just not my style. Early on in my political career – it became a dictum at the time – I said, “One can always afford to tell the truth in Irish politics but no one would believe it!”
Ah, homespun wisdom and bluff populism. That guy’s a lot more ideological than he likes to make out. A lot more.
Job subsidies redux. July 3, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.4 comments
Further to yesterday’s thoughts on the Irish Times and job subsidy programmes and Sarah Carey’s piece on same, here’s a riposte from David Begg of ICTU which further demonstrates some of the fallacies implicit in the original piece – not least that the unions haven’t signed up to the government proposals.
And here is an assessment of the issue by Donagh on the Irish Left Review which I think is very useful in exploring the overall terrain of what we might dubiously term a ‘debate’. Oh yeah, and as one person on Progressive Economy noted, and something I missed first time around (my bad, I’m definitely slowing up this week), the original article had a none too subtle placement of ‘lefties’ on Progressive Economy and ‘academics’ on Irish Economy – or to quote ‘If the lefties were willing to concede the point to the academics then it must be true’. Oh yeah, it must be true then… Nice!
BTW, entertaining to see that Begg is listed at the end of his article as “…a governor of The Irish Times Trust, proprietor of The Irish Times”. Such a small world – eh?
My Supper with Brendan… At the Aubane Historical Society… July 2, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Aubane Historical Society, British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO), Irish History, Irish Politics, The Further Left, The Left.25 comments
Many thanks to “An Interested Party” for the following…
While I was in Dublin on the 9th of May (staying with a relative), I decided to attend the Aubane Historical Society’s launch of the “Notes on Eire” book in the Teacher’s Club, out of curiosity. I’d heard about them on websites like Politics.ie and Indymedia-the former Unionists-turned-Nationalists. I was interested and wanted to discover what they were like in person.
I arrived at the Teacher’s Club at about 7.25 and there were several people waiting outside the entrance. As I was going in I was asked was I attending the book launch by one of the people. I replied “Yes”, and she gave me directions to the room. She was a friendly middle-aged woman with curled black hair and glasses and a distinct London accent, who looked like a scatty art teacher. So I went upstairs into theroom and there were seats assembled for a meeting. There were several otherpeople there, mostly men and all middle-aged.
Rather ironically, there was a copy of the Irish Times at the side of the room – publication the AHS has often strongly criticised. Two of the men there were discussing the IT’s obituary of the veteran B&ICO/AHS member Pat Murphy, who had passed away a few weeks ago. *
There was a guy on the right side of the room, running a table full of Athol Books magazines, -”Irish Political Review”,”Church and State”,”Irish Foreign Affairs”, “Problems of Capitalism and Socialism”, and “Labour and Trade Union Review”.
Numerous books and pamphlets were also there-the AHS’ famous book on the Coolacrease shootings, along with Angela Clifford’s pamphlets on Haughey’s role in the Arms Trial, Bowen’s “Notes on Eire”,and Desmond Fennell’s new book. Out of interest I bought a copy of the IPR from the man at the stall. After a while, more people started coming in, who all seemed to know each other.
I recognised veteran trade unionist Manus O’Riordan. After a while, there were about fifteen people in the room, including a priest, a man who looked like film critic Harry Knowles and a businessman who vaguely resembled Bruce Arnold.
So a few minutes passed, and then the “art teacher” woman (who another man called Angela-and then I recognised her as Angela Clifford, Brendan’s wife) told us Brendan clifford was coming in a few minutes. Two more men entered the room, and one of them assembled some notes, and then began to eat some chocolate ice cream for supper. “Brendan will be speaking in a minute, after he finishes his meal” said Angela to some laughs.
I gazed at the man called Brendan-this was the famous (or infamous,depending on your opinion) man behind the British and Irish Communist Organisation and Aubane Historical Society.
He is a man of average height,in his sixties or seventies, with a shock of grey hair that rises into curls in the middle, and a beard but no moustache (he struck me as resembling an aging Abraham Lincoln). After a few minutes Brendan finished eating and got ready to speak. Despite the previously informal atmosphere the other guests all quietened down and prepared to listen to him speak
(I was reminded of a teacher coming in and beginning a class). So he began to speak about the Elizabeth Bowen book. He has a soft, slightly reedy voice (despite his Cork/Kerry origins,it reminded me a little of Daniel O’Donnell, of all people!).First, he annouced that the other book announced for the launch (The Mansergh File) had been delayed in publication.
Then Clifford began discussing the details of the Bowen book and his research on her in WWII. He went into detail about her life and her WWII intelligence operations, which seem to be a strong interest of his. Clifford insisted that Bowen was not a North Cork writer, and that he had never met anyone from North Cork who regarded her an a Cork writer.
He turned out to be a rather rambling and slightly tedious speaker, as he kept wandering off the subject (once he digressed to discuss Maurice Hankey, the British politician).
However,when he mentioned Martin Mansergh and his father Nicholas, a note of genuine anger entered his voice. He stated that Mansergh wanted to “destroy us in the Aubane Historical Society” through his critical articles in the Irish Times. This made me slightly uncomfortable, as I got a feeling of “Don’t cross this man. Don’t make him angry” off him then.
After a while, he announced Jack Lane had found some new information about Bowen from his researches in London, and handed the platform over to him.
Jack Lane is a jovial Corkman with a moustache who somewhat resembles the late actor Joe Lynch.He was quite friendly and a far better public speaker than Clifford-a good, educated raconteur with a sense of humour.
He focused on the WWII activities of both Bowen and John Betjetman. I noticed that none of the speakers ever referred to Bowen as an “Irish” or “Anglo-Irish writer”-she was always the “English writer”.
Lane stated that the parts British government wanted to do several things to interfere with Irish neutrality-one of them was to set up a group of pro-British Irish businessmen in the Free State to further the UK’s interests.
Other things Lane discussed included putting UK propaganda messages in Irish products such as people’s laxatives (cue laughter) or plans to “interfere” with the supply of cinema films. I raised my hand to ask a question but Lane motioned me to wait until he had finished speaking. When he had finished, I asked if he meant the film thing was putting “subliminal messages”
or something similar in the films, but he said no, it was restricting films to frustrate the Irish entertainment industry. So the speech went on for a bit more, and Jack mentioned Manus was researching something on WWII, and also a red-haired woman called Eileen with a Cork accent began discussing “the Bell” magazine, saying it may have recieved paper supplies from the Irish government during the war. I got the feeling “The Bell” might be the next AHS subject.
I suppose I could have raised my hand and asked an awkard question like “Is it true you published material in the 1970s saying the 1920s IRA were sectarian?” or “Why did you support Likud in the 70s and Hamas today?” but I’ve always been a little shy about public speaking. And besides, the whole group seemed very “cliquey”-everyone seemed to recognise each
other. I was the youngest person there-the others were all in their 50s or older.
I did think about staying for the Fennell talk, but it was getting dark and I didn’t like the idea of walking through Dublin late at night. So after a while, there was a short break after Lane had finished his talk, and while they waited for Fennell, I left. I walked
out of the Teachers’ Club (there was a room full of Asian people and their kids that I walked past) and
went back to my relative’s flat.
She and her friend were having a chat when I got back, and I mentioned I’d gone to “a history discussion” on WWII. They were interested in it, and they asked who gave it.
“The Aubane Historical Society, from Millstreet” I replied.
“What’s a society from Millstreet doing lecturing in Dublin?” asked her friend, puzzled. Then I told them who was there. They’d never heard of most of the people there, but they did wonder what Manus O’Riordan the Communist was doing working with Desmond Fennell the Catholic conservative.
In the end, I didn’t really know what to make of the talk, or the people who gave it.
The Aubane Historical Society seem like a group of people genuinely interested in Irish history, but with some strange and contentious opinions. They also seemed like a very introspective group – felt like I’d walked in on a group of very close friends where I didn’t know anyone.
I’ll let my relative’s comments be the last word:
“I don’t know about these “Aubane” people, they sound like very strange folk indeed!”
Job subsidies… the media and the left response. Or…taking on the unions but, oddly, ignoring ISME… July 2, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.12 comments
It’s interesting how a political viewpoint will stick, as it were, forcing the writer down particular conceptual paths. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and I guess it’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least if it’s understood what the viewpoint is from the start. But it can lead to problems, a certain narrowness of focus, a tendency to not see the wood for the trees, and what finer example of that is in yesterday’s piece by Sarah Carey, now establishing herself as a sort of popular economics maven for the Irish Times.
She has dipped her toes back in the blogosphere and, to a degree, she likes what she sees…
I nearly fell off the couch the other night. There I was with one eye on the Grey’s Anatomy season finale and another on the internet. Then I saw it – the pseudonymous blogger Slí Eile on “progressive economy” agreed with a post by UCD economist Karl Whelan on “Irish economy”. The marriage of the terminally ill but suspiciously healthy looking Izzie would have to wait.
Irish economy is the group blog of academic economists where the financial crisis is analysed using classical economic theory. The “progressive” economists set up a rival blog on which they interpret the crisis from a left wing perspective. Everyone’s terribly polite, but the tension is palpable.
Yet on this night, on one point, the economists were in agreement: the plan announced by the Government to reduce unemployment by spending €250 million on job subsidies will not work. If the lefties were willing to concede the point to the academics then it must be true. The benefits of subsidies are described as “marginal” which means minimal. The failures are well accepted.
They are a “deadweight loss” which means that money inevitably “saves” jobs that were never in peril. Subsidies interfere with the process by which jobs are lost, even in the boom years, as particular sectors die natural deaths. A subsidy for one company could result in another going under as they are placed at a competitive disadvantage. The potential for corruption is enormous. Remember Export Credit Insurance when someone decided that one company should get most of the cover? The subsidy becomes either a tool of political patronage or a bureaucratic nightmare. Where does the money come from anyway? The €250 million has to be found from cuts elsewhere.
From there it is but a hop skip and a jump to the idea that:
The trade unions are the main drivers and they want €1 billion spent on the Plan That Will Not Work. I suppose Lenihan sees €250 million as a compromise. But if they both know it won’t work for €1 billion, why would it work for €250 million? Why not save the money for things that are good and efficient instead of bad and inefficient?
Now I might tentatively suggest that the effects of €1bn would be appreciably greater than €250 million and therefore might be worth examining on their own terms, but that approach is not for her for she has decided that €1bn won’t work, although Whelan and Slí Eile only reference the €250 milllion. I’ve always thought that one attempted to extrapolate from the given figure, not the other way around…
The inequities of the trade unions are detailed as follows in what we might term the Grey’s Anatomy school of economic discourse. You may not have heard of it previously:
The usual reasons: cosmetics and politics. As Whelan observed it makes everyone look good. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions looks like they’re doing something about unemployment. Ibec gets money for businesses and politicians look like they are dealing with the jobs crisis. It’s another mess to come out of social partnership, the system which saved us in 1987 and which should have been dumped in 2002.
This plan is just an excuse to keep redundant structures alive. If this was Grey’s Anatomy Derek would be pulling a tearful Meredith away from the corpse and hoarsely whispering “time of death June 2009”.
Yes. Very convincing.
There is nothing left in social partnership for trade unions. The only agenda – cutbacks – is one that materially harms their members. They threaten to walk away, but keep coming back. Why? Well, there’d be no more high powered meetings in Government Buildings; no more late night talks; no more being at The Table. The job subsidy plan might be a tenuous excuse to stay in the game, but it’s better than not playing.
There is a second possibility. The Ictu leadership may privately accept that harsh measures are necessary and in a spirit of patriotism and pragmatism is trying to sell the cuts to their membership. So far, cuts have been accepted relatively quietly but there are more to come. If they tried this on in France, there’d be riots. We had one spectacularly civilised march. Why? We are a terminally passive and conservative people, but perhaps behind the scenes the union leadership is quietly if cynically managing resistance. Give the members the odd march and have something to show for continuing talks – like €250 million that will supposedly help stem unemployment. As long as they can show a carrot – even one of those baby carrots that looks too orange and shiny to be real – they can claim it’s worth it.
Except she thinks that’s not good enough (In passing, what’s with ‘terminally passive and conservative people’? Previously she’s used the ‘conservative people’ trope as a good thing, now it’s ‘terminally’? Hmmmm)…
What’s in it for the Government? Maybe they understand David Begg’s problem and see the €250 million as the price of peace. If it keeps the public sector off the streets, maybe it’s €250 million well spent.
But, it isn’t. Because as we know, job subsidies are pointless and the €250 million could be spent on something else – like children’s surgery or the national development plan.
How about dropping the charade and instead of managing the citizens like children we are treated as adults. What would really happen if Lenihan just admitted that job subsidies are more trouble than they’re worth at any price? Could Begg muster up faith in his own membership or his ability to lead honestly and bravely? “Comrades, I have nothing to offer you but cuts and taxes. The deeper the pain now, the quicker all this will be over.”
The games might prove how terribly clever the players are, but there comes a time when the price is too high. Aren’t we there yet?
Ah, we have to be ‘adult’ about this, don’t we? We have to see pain. We have to talk pain. We have to have to have it inflicted on us. And union leaders have to stop being…well, union leaders and become cheerleaders for the economic right.
It’s the old fantasy of trying to get everyone to think as one does. And it’s a fantasy that unfortunately she indulges in on a continuing basis, not least and most recently where she demanded that the Labour party become in effect Fine Gael redux.
Let me stop right here and note something odd…
Like Slí Eile (and indeed in fairness, Carey) I’m very dubious about the job subsidies scheme, at least as currently structured, but… does Carey realise that standing beside Beggs promoting it would be Mark Fielding. Perhaps not arm in arm… but… y’know.
Mark Fielding? Who you ask?
According to ISME (Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association) Chief Executive, Mark Fielding, “There is no doubt that the problem has escalated once more, beyond what official sources anticipated. The Government’s ‘blinkered approach’ has contributed to a rapid rise in unemployment, even though strident warnings have been given. Talk of introducing a workplace subsidy scheme, while a step in the right direction, is still a case of doing too little”.
In conclusion Fielding outlined, “The Authorities are creating an environment of uncertainty, which is negatively impacting on employment. What is required is the immediate introduction of a National Action Plan to address the core issues of concern to business, including the lack of credit, late payments rising costs, together with addressing the cost of employment”.
Strange in the extreme, is it not, that ISME doesn’t get a walk on part in the IT critique of the unions? But perhaps that might spoil the story a bit, muddy the waters, introduce a note of unwelcome complexity.
Even beyond that inconvenient fact, the entirety of her piece is founded on a fallacy, that being that the only alternative of the left (or more particularly the unions) is an employment subsidy. But if one goes back to the original piece by Slí Éile one will see that s/he argues as regards the job subsidies package:
If – according to media reports – the main carrot on the table during the current round of Partnership talks is an employment subsidy, one is forced to ask:
* Is there hard and compelling evidence from the recent past, internationally, that such subsidies work in terms of creating genuinely new jobs or saving existing ones?
* Even if the answer to the above is yes, how much would it cost on average – per job, per firm and in the aggregate? Would alternative expenditures of the same amount be more effective?As matters stand, the latest EU figures on taxation indicate Irish taxes on labour are way out of line (very low reflecting a poor tradition of widespread social insurance). Irish employers’ contributions to social protection were 9.7% of total taxes in 2007 compared to a (weighted) EU average of 18.0%.
And we are talking about subsidies to employers?
Would it be easier to just drop payroll taxes on particular groups (say unemployed or particular types of employment and sectors). The problem with targeted interventions is not only deadweight effects, but the problem of excluding some sectors and categories and not others (like why would non-traded sectors be entirely excluded if they were producing sustainable social value?)
Karl Whelan has argued on irisheconomy.ie (with good reason I think):
….the principle reason for rising unemployment is a sharp reduction in labour demand owing to the steep nature of the recessions. Policies that are looking to offset this reduction in demand using wage subsidies are unlikely to have more than a marginal effect.
He goes on to argue:
one of the lessons emphasised by Jim Poterba in last week’s excellent Geary Lecture was that if we need to raise more revenue, it is best to do so by broadening the tax base while keeping rates low. Measures like this, which erode the tax base and have little effect on employment, are a step in the wrong direction.
Read his entire comment on these issues along with many comments on wage subsidie here.
Now, some might say this is simply unfair carping on my part, that Carey is looking at the specific union response which is – and I think many of us whatever our position will agree – far from stellar and the concentration on the job subsidies alone and in particular its minimal nature is far from heartening. That she might – whisper it – be right on this matter.
But the problem isn’t just the narrowness of the focus of the Irish Times piece, or that it explicitly comes to a conclusion which seeks to portray all centre left proposals as inadequate and implicitly childish… “…the only agenda is cutbacks”… but the fact that the column completely ignores the context within which Slí Eile and Whelan came to their convergent conclusion.
Because Slí Eile is not arguing that beyond the job subsidies proposal there is no other alternative approach being proposed by the left and that therefore we might as well fold our tent, take down our banners and go home ceding the field to the economic right.
For note that Slí Eile contextualises the above comments in relation to the following:
According to today’s media reports, the ICTU has ‘doubts over aspects of plan for recovery’ but argues that the Government proposals were ‘the only show in town’.
Lets hope not. Can we get back to some parts of the ICTU ‘Ten-point plan’ of last February? Remember. It advocated:
1. Protecting Jobs & Tackling Unemployment (including ‘reprioritising the Public Capital Programme to support job protection and labour intensive activities’)
2. Sorting the Banking System & overhaul of corporate governance (with ‘public control, either through Recapitalisation or Nationalisation’)
3. Competitiveness (through reduction in energy prices, professional fees and other costs plus productivity-enhancing investments)
4. The Pay Agreement 2008 (ICTU has made the case that wages have not been cut in 2008 as claimed by some)
5. Fairness & Taxation (our tax system is woefully skewed and unfair with large tax breaks for the better off and widespread legal avoidance)
6. Restoring Consumer Confidence (‘Surely the most sensible option is to stimulate the economy, rather than dampen spending and growth?)
7. The Public Service ‘Pension Levy’ (‘Workers did not create the problem, but will contribute to resolving it – as long as the wealthy also contribute. The problem with the course currently being pursued by Government and employers’ organisations is that the weakest suffer, while the wealthy contribute nothing.’)
8. Pensions (use ‘a state backed annuity and the possibility that private pension funds could have the option of voluntarily surrendering their assets to the state, in return for a certain level of guaranteed pension.)
9. Employment Rights Legislation
10. National Recovery Bond (‘ It could also be targeted at specific sectors such as school building or public transport, so people could see tangible gains’)
In other words Slí Eile is arguing precisely for those approaches laid out by ICTU in February as being of better value and worth more than a job subsidies programme. It’s not a choice between ‘pain’ and job subsidies with no other options available, it’s a choice between a serious and coherent left driven programme that will see the state take a lead role in sustaining and encouraging growth and employment across a range of areas and the ‘pain’ agenda.
Which implicitly means that Beggs would not come out with Comrades, I have nothing to offer you but cuts and taxes. The deeper the pain now, the quicker all this will be over.” but instead would be seeking those ten points, or at least those which have not been superseded by events, to be implemented. Maybe he wouldn’t have Mark Fielding at his side, or perhaps he would… who can tell in this topsy turvy world we live in these days.
But that small, yet crucial, detail, is – as I said earlier – completely ignored. Odd that, eh?
Statement on the coup in Honduras – Communist Party of Ireland. July 1, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in International Politics, Irish Politics.add a comment
*Communist Party of Ireland*
Issued
30th June 2009.
*Statement on the coup in Honduras. *
The coup d’état in Honduras shows that the old habits of the privileged oligarchies of Latin America have not gone away. Even the moderate proposals of President Zelaya for a consultation of the people towards a consideration of constitutional change were not acceptable to them, so fearful are they of losing their privileges.
The coup follows a familiar pattern:- a massive media campaign, with the participation of NGOs funded from the USA, – “Paz y Democracia”, for example, culminating with the kidnapping of the President, even to claiming that he had resigned.
It is an attempt to set back the democratic progress which the peoples of Latin America have been making in recent years, and to restore Honduras as a base for reaction, as it was during Reagan’s dirty war against Sandinista Nicaragua. It brings back unhappy memories of what many Latin American countries suffered at the hands of the military regimes installed with the help of the USA in the 20th century.
This coup has been repudiated, and the reinstatement of the President demanded, by the countries of Alba (Bolivarian Alternative for America), by the President of the United Nations General Assembly, and by the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States.
The Rio Group, which represents the countries of Latin America and the Carribean, and the European Union have expressed support for that position.
As President Lula of Brazil put it – “We cannot, in the 21st century, allow a military coup in Latin America. It is unacceptable. We cannot recognise the new government. We must ensure the return of the democratically elected government.”
The United States government, while stating its opposition to the coup, could not bring itself to demand the immediate reinstatement of President Zelaya, instead, in its statement on Sunday 28th June, calling for dialogue. Dialogue with whom? The putschists? A more forthright statement is called for.
The Communist Party of Ireland calls on all democrats to show their solidarity with the popular forces in Honduras, who defied the curfew to demonstrate at the Presidential palace, not only in their demand for the return of the President, but in their continuing struggle for a broader and deeper democracy in which the mass of the people can participate.
Doubting Thomas… I mean, of course, Jim Allister on the Loyalist decommissioning process. July 1, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Northern Ireland.1 comment so far
Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice… and by the way… what the hell has happened to political Unionism so that the supposedly blunt and honest voice of Ulster (or at least the dominant one) now has decided the only way to engage with the twenty-first century is through the most incredibly unwieldy of names and acronyms?
But returning to the matter at hand, you’d think that Allister would be at the least pleased at the events of the weekend. Not a bit of it. In his bid to retain the ground he has carved out as the authentic voice of 1980s style Unionist intransigence he…
…has challenged the secrecy surrounding loyalist weapons decommissioning and criticised the process as “lacking credibility”.
Only immediate publication of a weapons inventory would establish the necessary public confidence, he said.
Would it? Would it really? Why?
“Self-certification by a paramilitary organisation that what has been decommissioned in fact represents the totality of their arsenal is as self-rewarding as it is lacking in transparency,” he said.
“The public need and demand clarity. As things stand, we cannot say what was decommissioned or where or when or how it took place. Reports of the UVF’s and UDA’s decommissioning lack credibility in the same way that those of the IRA’s in 2005 did.
“The inventories of what has been destroyed by the IRA and UVF should be published immediately. Then security experts will be in a position to make an informed judgment on what happened.”
But since security experts would be in their ‘informed judgement’ be making little better than well-educated guesses, and it’s highly likely that even paramilitary groupings themselves are unaware of the entirety of their arsenals, it’s difficult to take seriously his notion that this would lead to any greater sense of security. Or that he would genuinely accept it as such.
And in the broader sweep of things he misses (or deliberately ignores) the point. Decommissioning isn’t about the numbers of weapons – at least not primarily. It is about the process, the gesture, the idea that a group which hitherto existed beyond legal political and military recourse is willing to engage and demonstrably and materially so. It’s a fine line, but not that fine. Obviously a car boot full of weapons isn’t sufficient, but once one moves beyond a certain point – and for me General de Chastelain’s affirmation that he had seen a ‘major decommissioning event’ is just fine – it becomes irrelevant whether it’s three hundred weapons or a thousand.
And the conceptual knot that Allister finds himself in is best exemplified by the almost incredible statement that…
…there [is] a negative side to decommissioning.
Because while there is no small degree of truth in the idea that:
“A wealth of forensic evidence will have been lost. This will mean that the slim hopes victims had of seeing those who butchered their loved ones brought to justice have seen a significant setback. Failure to have granted these people their day in court is not something any society should celebrate.”
… again there’s a fine line here, and a more sensitive one than that described above. Allister in a way points to the heart of the accommodation that took place in the North. Northern Ireland in order to progress has had to if not quite ignore then evade some of the more unpalatable aspects of the conflict and this has been a dynamic that has been evident in relation to almost all aspects of it.
What he ignores is that those weapons still within the ownership of the paramilitaries were unlikely to see the light of day for forensic testing in the near future. Whereas the clear continuing threat that they presented is now radically (although not entirely – since dissidents can still manifest themselves on all sides) diminished. How does one weight that? Perhaps it is not even possible and only a pragmatic approach of dealing with these as they are being dealt with is possible.
Perhaps it is more important for societal stability and the opportunity for some sort of political development to accept, however reluctantly, that absolute clarity is an illusion, that this throws up painful contradictions, that it is impossible to move forward without disregarding some of that past. I don’t know how that works, or if it can. But… his alternative somehow doesn’t seem to be any more real or credible.
Statistics… useful and not so useful. July 1, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.19 comments
How to make head or tail of the reportin the Irish Times about the numbers of state employees being up by 3,000.
Except…
More than 371,000 people were employed by the State in all of its operations in March 2009, up from 368,300 the year before, but 2,900 people have been let go or have not had their contracts renewed since December.
And to add to the confusion…
Nearly 3,000 more people are working in education in the year to March and 1,500 in hospitals. Yet 500 fewer are working for semi-State companies and 1,200 fewer in local authorities and other local bodies.
However, nearly 20,000 more have been employed by the State in the last three years – even though 3,600 fewer people work for semi-State companies due to privatisations than did in March 2006.
More than 8,000 more work in hospitals; though this figure includes some workers who would not have been previously included in earlier statistics, while Garda Síochána numbers rose by 2,000 during the three years.
And shockingly…
Some 30 per cent of all State workers are employed in health, as they were in 2006, while the shares held by other categories have changed little during that period, indicating that no major reorganisations have taken place.
Look, tiresome as this may be to some, just look back at the OECD report which noted that our numbers in the PS/CS were low by international standards and needed to be increased in line with our increased population. So, precisely why would the IT think that the shares would change from 2006 onwards? Indeed what rationale do they apply?
Meanwhile, ISME, always keen to wield a razor and apparently attempting to cut its own throat in the process, argues that…
The CSO pay figures prompted small and medium employers’ organisation ISME to demand major reforms and “individual audits” to be done in each State body to see where job numbers could be cut.
Nearly 115,000 people have lost their jobs in the private sector. While average pay levels have been cut by 13 per cent, State pay levels continued to rise, said ISME.
And who, precisely, will be going to the small enterprises to buy their coffee and breakfast rolls and newspapers and sofa’s and God knows what if numbers in the public sector decline any further or even match those of the private sector? I mean, this isn’t a zero sum game. If the private sector is to survive it needs, needs, people in work, all work, any kind of work. Particularly given that we are increasingly a service sector economy, a private sector that has demonstrably failed in one of its key areas over the past twelve months… well actually two of its key areas, finance and construction.
Meanwhile back at the pay rate range…
However, gross pay rates for State-employed workers rose above €50,000-a-year for the first time, up by 3.4 per cent in the 12 months to March.
Each State employee, on average, now earns €12,000 more than the average industrial worker, who takes home €38,000 gross, and €10,000 more than the average private sector worker, who earns €40,500.
Average weekly earnings rose from €941.01 to €973.0. Although Defence Forces’ pay rates were up 5.2 per cent – from €788.18 to €828.79 – average pay for gardaí fell by 4 per cent from €1,226.16 to €1,177.54.
Now feck me, but although only on contract myself I’ve got to be honest most people who I’ve worked with in the CS/PS who are permanent aren’t on 50k per annum. In statistical terms that anecdotal evidence is supported by the simple fact that wages (in any sector) tend to what are termed skewed distributions with some high, some low and some at various points in between…
Oh…
The figures measure gross pay and do not take any accounts of real reductions in pay suffered by public sector workers from the imposition of the pension levy.
So in fact ‘each State employee’ does not earn €50,000. And with the pension levy included most earn substantially less again.
Could it be that we really need the ‘median’ figure which might deliver a rather different perspective on this matter? Would that be too much effort for the ‘paper of record’? I leave the answer to you.
And what about third level (where as it happens I’m also on contract)…
Soldiers’ average pay jumped by 17.5 per cent during the three years; that for gardaí by just 5.9 per cent once overtime was included. Primary and secondary teachers were 10 per cent better-off, but those working in third-level did better, earning 17.9 per cent more.
Secondary school teachers, however, earn significantly more than their colleagues in VEC schools and at primary level, receiving on average €1,103 per week compared with €882 and €907 respectively.
17.9%. I’d like a piece of that action… I really would…
Any chance at all we might get some serious analysis of figures rather than headline scouring? And any guesses how this particular set of statistics will play in the public imagination the week of the Bord Snip report?
(Actually, latest latest, I see this morning that there’s one report that the government is delaying implementation of the report until the Autumn, presumably so Lisbon is well out of the way, amongst other reasons – perhaps also that the outcomes of such measures are… well, relatively speaking still so miserly in terms of the overall picture… prepare for other headlines about ‘Cowen bottling it’, etc, etc).
