Public sector reform… redux, redux… June 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.23 comments
And so, the Irish Times is back on the issue yet again. Under the heading “Public Sector Reform” the editorial today argues that:
REFORM OF the public service was made a priority by Brian Cowen when he became Taoiseach a little more than a year ago. Now, following months of negotiation with trade unions in extremely difficult economic circumstances, there is hope that progress can be made. Key accommodations will have to be reached before the end of this month. At stake is whether restructuring of the public service can take place without disruption and in an orderly fashion.
It continues that:
Talks on a new social partnership deal are providing a framework for change. Measures to protect and to create employment in the private sector, along with pension protection initiatives, are being offered by Government in return for commitments on public sector reform. Strong resistance to the introduction of change and the reallocation of staff has been so pronounced within the health services that talks collapsed earlier this week. The HSE suspended its voluntary redundancy programme because trade unions objected to the necessary redeployment of remaining staff. Similar difficulties may emerge in the civil service where 3,500 employees have applied for early retirement.
And then…
The need for public and civil service reform is beyond question. From the survival of an antiquated system of “privileged days”, to public opening and working hours and demarcation arrangements, the system has become practically sclerotic.
Has it? Is there one shred of evidence that the system is practically or otherwise ‘sclerotic’? In your dealings, or mine, with the public sector have you been faced with characteristics which could in any shape or form align with such a description? I hesitate to argue from anecdote, but in the last six months I’ve interacted with the HSE and individual hospitals, out of hours medical coverage, child-care facilities provided through the public sector to the general public in the form of play and parent/child groups (I could rave about them if you like), Revenue (my favourite, no less), third level institutions, various public sector facilities including libraries, citizens information, Dublin City Council, the Gardai, two government Departments, etc, etc. The only places where I found anything less than courtesy, speedy acquisition of information and what I can describe as a good service was one of the aforementioned third level institutions, which in all honesty could be razed to the ground with little loss to public or society – another outside of Dublin was in my estimation an example of precisely how to operate such entities, and a branch of the parks which seems to operate semi-autonomously from DCC. Sure, I once had a conversation with a woman in Revenue which despite her courtesy wasn’t terribly illuminating. But, sin é.
At no point did I have a sense of a ‘sclerotic’ public service, and to be honest the standard of service was actually much higher than it was say ten or fifteen years ago. This shouldn’t be a surprise, there’s been a course of rolling ‘reforms’ in that period, low level stuff, for the most part not made too much of, but still there.
And one thing that really strikes me is how some Departments have taken to the ‘push’ model rather than the ‘pull’. That this is often self-serving in terms of the basic fact they want to take monies in now is beside the point. And that it filled me with little joy to see my self-assessment forms posted out to my address along with a cheque form for pre-payment of tax is besides the point. That’s basic efficiency. That’s what I expect a state to do and ironically that’s not what happened during the boom times, when as a person I rang in Revenue to query the arrival of the form said… ‘so much was coming in we didn’t make an issue of it – payment always took place’.
Which makes this near obsessional concentration on ‘privilege days’, public opening and demarcation etc so odd. From the bad-tempered discussion that ensued as regards the former it is clear that rather than being some sort of systemic problem privileged days, and opening hours are actually problems confined to fairly specific areas – mainly on the education/training side. As it happens, and as one who works partly in the former area, I’m no fan of the way some third level institutions operate in this state. Holidays are too long (full disclosure, on my contracts I’m not eligible for paid holidays or sick days – them’s the breaks), working hours too short, communications within them pathetic, oversight of students is partial and dependent upon the lecturers involved and in some there is a culture of bloody minded apathy amongst staff… I could go on. But, these are sectoral concerns and not something I’d even attempt to argue is symptomatic of the public sector as a whole or even all institutions. But it points up a basic problem when we talk about ‘public sector reform’. The public sector of its nature is a variegated creature with many different areas within its orbit. A simplistic and populist straitjacket won’t fit. Otherwise, for example, when talking about holiday days, why not bring all PS employees across the areas down to say 22 days, and for those who get longer holidays – such as academics – cut their pay accordingly to reflect the intrinsic bonus they get through three month holidays. Or how about increasing the number of working weeks without increasing pay to bring them more obviously into line with the ‘norm’ of 22 days. To propose such an argument is to demonstrate it’s pointlessness – and as I said before, I’m not averse to reformatting holidays for third level (and in some ways re-examining them in second level). We cannot argue that like is like, that every aspect of the PS is equivalent.
But let’s also note the rather minimal nature of such ‘reforms’. Demarcation is already much less of a problem than it used to be prior to the 1990s, which is not to say issues concerning it don’t remain. Privileged days? A couple of days a year extra in holiday allocation. I say fold them back into leave. Public opening? As was previously noted, only affects a number of areas (and in any case, how does that square with financial cuts?).
Lest it be said that I’m not open to any reforms, that would be incorrect. I’m all for increased flexibility. I agree that privileged days could be detached from Christmas and Easter in specific areas and folded back into annual leave. No doubt there are issues of demarcation that could be examined.
Does the IT, though, seriously propose that these ‘reforms’ will materially affect our financial situation? And note that the proposals it makes could potentially worsen that situation…
A bloody-minded response to suggestions for change by certain employees has made the situation difficult. But Government finances are in such a desperate situation that traditional fudges cannot be tolerated. There may be genuine concerns in relation to the redeployment of staff to adjoining towns. But it is reasonable to expect flexibility and work commitment from the holders of permanent, well-paid jobs.
Such redeployments would most likely, as they do in private companies I’ve worked for, necessitate some sort of gesture to cover increased transport costs. I’ve seen it happen in the corporate and commercial world. Sauce for the goose and all that. We’re already seeing how redundancy schemes can cause perverse effects whereby the very staff you need to stay start to pack their bags.
And I can’t help but feel that the IT’s ‘reasonable’ could very rapidly become unreasonable. Permanent job or no, and seriously, is the IT arguing that the PS/CS as a cache of ‘permanent’ jobs is likely to remain extant under the current circumstances given the rhetoric it itself indulges in, even commercial enterprises are fairly slow and loath to push people around at will. The same is true of ‘well-paid’. Those in the PS/CS have seen salaries decline precipitously in the past six months – as indeed have some of those in the private sector (I refer people back to this post to get a read on whether it is the majority of the private sector who have seen wages decline. It would, so far, appear not).
Yet the IT explicitly argues for more…
If the Government holds its nerve and insists on reform, social partnership may deliver a more efficient and responsive public service. It could mark the beginning of more fundamental change as the so-called “An Bord Snip” presents its long-awaited recommendations on the more effective use of public service numbers. A review of pay levels for Ministers, judges and higher civil and public servants is due in September. It is expected to suggest reductions in salaries. In the past, pay increases had a knock-on effect for others. The effect on this occasion will be keenly watched.
Again, I’m all for cutting back the absurd pay levels of the higher echelons of our public sector. But note the phrase ‘knock-on effect for others’. Does it simply mean those on higher levels of pay in the private sector? I’m dubious that that was the dynamic in play at any time during the past fifteen years. If anything, and we heard this excuse ad nauseum from the dear leader Ahern, those in the public sector (and in particular politicians) lagged behind the private sector, not the other way around. The pernicious effect of increased wages in the private sector, although memories appear remarkably faulty on this matter, was the reason to give a concrete example why the ASTI (or rather a vocal faction within it) went on a solo run in the early 2000s with a sort of ill-digested and – to use that phrase again – self-serving labour elite analysis of their own position pushing aside former comrades in the other teaching unions as they did so. I remember talking to friends of mine working in IT in the PS who in the late 1990s gazed enviously at the mega-bucks being made by their friends in the private sector, openly wondering whether they should jump ship.
Perhaps as was put to me today by someone given the financial situation it will come down to a choice between pay cuts and shedding contract/non permanent staff. That may well be, but if so it would be better if we cut to the chase. Because all this stuff in between seems so minimal in its impact on the financial situation and cosmetic as regards simply assuaging an appetite for pain (whatever the broader economic cost) as to be near pointless. So yeah, I’ll be watching keenly too. But if the phrase ‘same old same old’ comes to mind you’ll excuse my cynicism about this entire exercise…
The Irish Left Archive: An Phoblacht: 1991, 75th Anniversary of the Rising Issue, Sinn Féin. June 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Sinn Féin.8 comments
This edition of An Phoblacht is devoted to the 75th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising. And therefore it provides an encapsulation of the Sinn Féin position at a time prior to the ceasefires and yet when the political dynamic was moving slowly towards a context where they would become possible. In this light the editorial is of particular interest. Added to this was the necessary legitimation of their then positions in the context of 1916, as when it explicitly argues that “IRA same then as now”.
In 1991, there are those who do not wish to remember 1916 because they fear the link will be made between the Irish Republican Army of today and its predecessors of Easter Week. There are others who will pay lip-service to 1916 and claim that the IRA of today is fundamentally different and not fighting in the same cause.
Both are wrong. The Irish Republican Army which came into being on the bullet-swept streets of Dublin in 1916, is the same IRA, fighting in the same cause, as that which confronts British rule in arms today.
From the perspective of the archive it is difficult to say that this is an explicitly left document although it is infused with language that tilts towards leftist concerns. Consider this quote from the editorial:
In decades of opposition to partition and upholding the ideals of the Proclamation, republicans have sacrificed much. They have also been proven right. Justice, equality and peace are not and never were possible in a partitioned Ireland. This is as true today as when partition was first imposed; the record of poverty, violence, unemployment, sectarianism, discrimination, unemployment, emigration – symptoms of political, social, economic and cultural failure in both states, proves the point.
And it concludes…
In one of his last messages during Easter Week, James Connolly paid tribute to all his comrades when he said: “Never had man or woman a grander cause, never was a cause more grandly served.” We repeat that message today and are confident that the cause of Connolly and Pearse and all ho have followed them will triumph in the ’90s.
Yet it would be wrong to say that there is no overt hint of leftism. Perhaps most tellingly in the form of a two page article on leathanach 14 which deals with “James Connolly – the practical visionary”. By contrast Pearse is given a single page. The Connolly article rebuts the idea, which it argues is put about by “revisionist historians” that … “James Connolly’s participating in the 1916 uprising is the ultimate proof of his abandonment of socialism”. The analysis offered there attempts with varying degrees of success to argue the correctness of Connolly’s actions, arguing that while a breach with ‘classical’ Marxism it was ‘a thoroughly socialist perspective, similar (though not identical) to the strategy then being followed by Lenin in Russia’. And it concludes with the proposition that Labour in its various manifestations ducked away from the possibilities offered in the post-1916 period through to the establishment of the Free State, and has done so ever since.
There’s much more to say, but perhaps others will give their opinions on the document as a whole.
Apologies for file size. Am I correct in assuming most of us are now on broad band? Or are there some toiling away on dial-up? Please tell me so I can tailor, as best as is possible, PDFs to suit.
This text and these files are a resource for use freely by anyone who wants to for whatever purpose – that’s the whole point of the Archive (well that and the discussions). But if you do happen to use them we’d really appreciate if you mentioned that you found them at the Irish Left Online Document Archive…
Something of interest this Summer… June 14, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History, The Left.16 comments
Anyone seen Magill recently? June 14, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Media and Journalism.8 comments
I can’t say I have. And yet, reading the Irish Times some weeks ago I was puzzled to see that a review of Colm O’Gorman’s memoir “Beyond Belief” was credited to:
Eamon Delaney… editor of Magill magazine
Which is odd, since even a cursory visit to their website seems to indicate that new issues haven’t been added to it since late 2008 (although the website itself says Magill Magazine 2009). Even more telling is the distribution of issues across the years 2006 to 2008. www.magill.ie/
2006 only records October, November and Dec/Jan – although presumably there were issues prior to that. 2007 is a little more healthy with issues in February, March, April, May and then a trend set with June/July, Aug/Sep, Oct/Nov and Dec/Jan issues.
2008 sees only four issues, on the website, with Feb/Mar, Apr/May, June/July, Oct/Nov and nothing is recorded for 2009. I can’t actually recall the last issue I purchased. I couldn’t bet on it, but I suspect it was earlier this year. Or maybe not.
For a periodical which suggests on its masthead that it is Ireland’s political and cultural magazine it would be useful for it to be a little bit more periodic. Not least due the simple fact that there’s an awful lot of news out there. Indeed it’s a remarkable insight into this polity that we are seemingly only able to sustain one semi-serious political commentary magazine, that being The Phoenix, across a protracted period of time. Village and Magill, like many a title before them, have enjoyed (although that’s hardly the appropriate term) a sort of half life, never entirely locking into a sustained existence. Speaking of Village, its current incarnation is pretty weird. There’s some material that is quite good, but it appears to be run on an absolute shoe-string, and… there’s something about the tone which seems an odd cross between the belligerent and the smart-arse.
But the overall issue of Magill seeming to fade before our eyes seems enormously strange if one thinks about if for a moment. After all, our population has increased rapidly in the last two decades. In terms of political coverage one would think that there would be considerable scope for even one serious political or current affairs magazine.
Nor is this a time in history lacking in events that require rigorous analysis. We’ve seen the markets crash, we have had a Lisbon referendum which has – perhaps momentarily – called into question our relationship with the EU. We have an Executive in the North. We have new political formations contesting elections and so on and so forth. Our government is on the ropes (don’t you just know that that would be the cover of an edition if it had appeared recently – or maybe it did and it was!). If anything these days are passingly similar to the heyday of the magazine back in the 1980s. And even for those of us who find that worth consideration a little less excitement might be no bad thing.
Granted the competition, such as it is, from other media is considerable. But even there, say with television, political coverage has been marginalised and splintered across various providers – and the differences between television news in the early 1990s and today is quite marked. New media perhaps are eating into market share, but, I find it hard, say taking account of daily hits to this site and extrapolating them by the number of political blogs I can think of off the top of my head, to believe that they would replace a magazine. Indeed I’d have thought they’d supplement it.
Or maybe the basic truth is that while people want to talk about and engage with political activity they simply don’t want to pay for commentary about it in the form of magazines. Maybe the fact that so much is now on-line and that there is such a spread of material from serious media organisations through to more informal information collation and analysis outlets that a magazine format – for this area – is too limiting. It’s odd, I used to enjoy Prospect magazine back in the day, in part because while never straying very far from the orbit of New Labour it did, at least in part, seem to have a half-hearted critique. And in addition to that it was always useful as a means of gaining an insight into the thoughts of Washington foreign policy circles during the Bush era. How thin a read it is these days by comparison. Perhaps it sits there unable to entirely assimilate the renascence of the Conservatives and the potential obliteration of the liberal centre that it has implicitly espoused. Or perhaps, as happens to magazines, its time has passed. Perhaps the real action is now with magazines explicitly of the centre right, or the centre and further left.
Now, all that musing aside, add to this the decreasing frequency of issue of Magill and one can understand how for those who were loyal to the title this might cause something of a problem. And add to that the very very variable quality of the brand. I’m not one who was alienated by the shift to the right on the part of Magill. It’s always useful to get good writing and analysis from whatever quarter. But let’s stress the idea of ‘good writing and analysis’. To date Magill has been a mixed bag. A very mixed bag indeed. To be honest it’s been hard to like, let alone love, for a long time now with a remarkably impoverished approach – not least in that articles seem oddly curtailed and the selection of those writing seemed idiosyncratic. Perhaps it is that those on the right aren’t terribly interested in a right-leaning magazine and those on the left have abandoned it completely.
If so, and the bi-monthly issues are not a good sign, that is something of a pity. That I only missed it once it went missing, so to speak, has to mean something. This state, let alone this island, could do with some serious printed political, economic and current affairs analysis. The times demand it. Don’t they?
This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… classical music… June 13, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....12 comments
A guest post by D.J.P. O’Kane.
This post differs from other, similar, posts on a musical theme by containing references to classical music. Those of a nervous disposition should read no further. I don’t listen to classical music exclusively – I’ve been listening to Neko Case’s alt-country-indie pop crossover stuff a lot these days – but more often than not I’d put the likes of Maxim Vengerov playing Mozart on, rather whatever desperate faraggo has caught the popular imagination this week.
Here’s Neko Case with her song ‘This Tornado Loves You’:
And here’s Maxim Vengerov playing Mozart.
The reason I’m typing this is because WorldByStorm challenged me to write something about classical music in the style of his ‘this weekend I’m listening to. . . ‘ posts. In the comments section of one of those posts, I challenged him on the grounds that since he was even older than me (and I see new grey hairs every time I look in the mirror in the morning) it was a bit peculiar that he should be listening to musical genres that were identified in the deepest darkest depths of the twentieth century with ‘the young’ that motley crew united only by their shared membership in a chronological category.
I write this not only in a spirit of ‘hey, you kids, get off my lawn’, though I admit that that plays some part in my thinking. I’m writing this because I found that apart from nostalgia there is (for me) no real reason to listen to sounds that are (in my subjective opinion) incapable of dealing with complex and serious adult themes, or of connecting with the reality of our times in the way that classical, folk, jazz, or other genres can.
So one reason – though not the only reason for listening to classical music (or to Jazz, or Folk, or what have you) is that it provides a particular way of getting access to a broader view of the world than you’d get with the stuff ‘the kids’ listen to. Compare Joy Division’s flirtation with fascist imagery (and I’m not too sure about their name implying identification with the victims) with Oliver Messaien’s Quartet for the End of Time.
First off here’s Joy Division on UK television in the late 1970s:
Now here’s a contemporary rendering of the Quartet for the End of Time:
Messaien composed his piece while interned in a concentration camp in occupied Europe. I’ll admit that I don’t listen to this sort of thing very often, but I do think that it’s a more effective reflection in musical art of the reality of the twentieth century than you’d get with Joy Division. The fact that the musicians doing Messaien’s piece can actually play their instruments to a very high level of skill helps as well.
In conclusion, here’s my all time favourite classical piece, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, from the opera Prince Igor.
A little light reading for the weekend? Nah, but something that might be useful… June 12, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.24 comments
The Irish Left Review has a post by Michael Taft that encapsulates what he has been arguing for a considerable length of time on Notes on the Front and a line which the CLR has been strongly supportive of. It marks the launch of UNITE’s “Growing the economy: A Programme for Economic Stimulus”.
The thesis, is that the current approaches to the economic crisis are bizarrely inappropriate for this economy at this point in time, that rather than stimulating growth and recovery the government, aided and abetted by a consensus that stretches across our putative opposition (or at least the larger component) through to the commentariat, is pursuing policies which will lead to yet further contractions and a protracted period of stagnation if not indeed decline.
And for those who decry the position taken by UNITE and Michael on this a handy chart he provides indicates a process whereby the government/EU and ESRI targets for the budget deficit keep being set and then exceeded. It’s profoundly worrying.
I’d recommend anyone interested in such matters to read it.
Now they tell us? Or…those Lisbon II optics. June 12, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in European Politics, Irish Politics.23 comments
Whatever position we take on Lisbon I think we could be allowed a slightly cynical laugh at the news report yesterday that:
THE GOVERNMENT faces opposition to its demand for legally binding guarantees on the Lisbon Treaty because some EU states fear it will reopen the treaty debate in their own countries.
EU states have also raised concerns about the implications of the Irish guarantee on the right to life, education and family and a separate declaration on workers’ rights.
Okay.
A meeting of EU ambassadors to discuss the text of the guarantees was scheduled for today but it was cancelled last night because of problems that emerged at bilateral meetings between Irish officials and their EU counterparts. Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden have all raised concerns about the text, which is due to be agreed at an EU leaders’ summit next week.
This sounds serious, doesn’t it?
“What kind of concrete form that legally binding document could have is something that is subject to discussion. Some parts of the concrete texts are also still under discussion,” said Czech Europe minister Stefan Fule, who is chairing the delicate negotiations on behalf of the rotating EU presidency.
He said EU states had agreed to give guarantees on the specific areas of family, right to life, religion, neutrality and taxation. But he said there was also a consensus that there is a “red line that cannot be crossed”, which is that member states do not want to have to ratify the treaty again.
All eminently understandable if we consider the realpolitic of the matter. And all fascinating in that it is clear that the gifting of the guarantees isn’t the issue, it’s the can of worms that granting them to the RoI that may incur pain…
Mr Cowen’s request was seemingly granted when French president Nicolas Sarkozy told the media an Irish protocol with the guarantees could be ratified by all states with the next EU accession treaty, probably Croatia.
But it is understood Britain, in particular, is very nervous about reopening a national debate on Lisbon by agreeing to ratify an Irish protocol through the House of Commons. The Conservatives made the Lisbon Treaty a key issue in their European election campaign, which saw Labour beaten into third place by the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party.
“There are huge sensitivities around Lisbon for the British government,” said one EU source.
Indeed there are, but as of yet the Labour Party remains the dominant force at Westminster, and the Conservative Party has played a rather mealy mouthed role in the whole affair taking a tactical position that they will essentially accept Irish ratification but otherwise will put it to a referendum.
Britain is not alone in fearing that agreeing to ratify a protocol through national parliaments could cause complications. Several states are worried that agreeing to the Irish demand could provoke the Eurosceptic Czech president Vaclav Klaus to refuse to sign the Lisbon Treaty to prevent its ratification even if the Irish public votes yes in a second referendum.
Yeah, I guess Klaus might do that, but at the very least that would precipitate a crisis in Czech internal politics that perhaps even he would resile from.
Plan B?
One alternative that member states may offer the Government is a legal decision on the guarantees issued by the European Council. This would have legal standing but would enshrine the guarantees in the EU treaties.
And yet, how to square that with the news not three days ago that:
The European Union must “quickly agree” a package of measures to secure Irish ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said today.
Speaking after a meeting in Brussels, Mr Barroso said he hoped the union could resolve the outstanding institutional issues in line with agreements made at the European Council last December, where Taoiseach Brian Cowen secured a number of concessions to make the treaty more palatable to the Irish electorate.
The key elements of the deal involve agreement that all EU states retain a commissioner, and that legal guarantees on issues of concern to the Irish electorate such as neutrality, abortion and taxation are accepted.
It’s not an absolute contradiction between the two articles. It’s possible that some of the governments, in their collective and individual wisdom are rowing back, and that the Commission might be attempting to herd the cats, as it were.
And what of the comments of Sarkozy yesterday where he:
…said his understanding was that a second Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty would be held in September or October. He said he and Mrs Merkel were prepared to get involved to help ensure the “yes” vote wins.
“Mrs Merkel and I will do everything we can to help the Irish make the choice for Lisbon,” he said. “If it is of use, I would even be ready to travel to Ireland to support them.”
Yes… well… perhaps.
And of course, returning to the comments Barroso made, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? And perhaps he too is attempting to rush the protagonists to a solution. But it does appear that all the points made above are positioning by the various interest groups and the reality is that if not quite a done deal then we are further along the road to a conclusion that would be satisfactory to the various governments than the article would suggest.
Nothing in this world is certain beyond question, but I’d be amazed if agreements aren’t reached on Lisbon II that will reflect the tenor of the statements made to date. Amazed I tell you… 
Something I didn’t post during the byelection… June 12, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.16 comments
Here’s a little something I didn’t bother to put up during the election contest. As I noted to someone who mentioned it I’m not quite in the no free speech for Fascists camp, and it’s not due to any excess of virtue on these matters on my part, but I see no reason to particularly publicise the doings of those who hold that particular viewpoint (incidentally the reason I didn’t apply that dictum to Libertas was that, quite apart from a healthy does of scepticism about the centrality of the CLR to political debate on this island, that it was so hugely inept for much of the time and I figured any news was bad news for them).
Anyhow, here is the offending article. Apart from the obvious, poor design, a proliferation of exclamation marks and curious bold/light typography what can one say about it? I’m intrigued that the phrase ‘ultra-liberal agenda’ in the 8th point/paragraph wasn’t in bold. They should have made it 18 point with giant arrows drawn in on the page pointing to it…
Eoghan Harris articulated a comfortable belief this week that somehow being a state with two centre right parties there was no need for a xenophobic far-right grouping with the apparent success of the BNP in the UK. I’m not persuaded. This sort of material is a pin-prick to the body politic at the moment. But just as the BNP has adroitly softened its message over the past decade in order to allow entry to the discourse of effectively racist rhetoric it’s unwise to entirely discount the capacity for negative developments from this sort of formation and material.
Libertas… Libertas… redux… June 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in European Politics, Irish Politics.2 comments
EU party Libertas leaves Dutch without cash
Thursday 11 June 2009
The pan-European party Libertas, created by Irish businessman Declan Ganley to fight in last week’s European elections, did not come up with the promised cash for its operation in the Netherlands, the Volkskrant reports on Thursday.
Eline van den Broek, who headed the Dutch campaign, had expected €1.1m to fight for a seat in the European parliament.
The party spent €350,000 ‘in good faith’. ‘But because no money was being made over from Ireland we had to restrict our activities. We made tv adverts but we could not pay for air time,’ Van den Broek told the paper.
On Wednesday, Ganley closed the Libertas offices in Brussels and Dublin, two days after announcing his withdrawal from politics. Libertas won some 14,000 votes in the Netherlands.
‘It would be easy to assume he is a rip-off merchant, but he is too rich for that,’ Van den Broek told Nos tv later. ‘Maybe he has been put under pressure to stop. Why else would you want to scupper your own campaign.’
Nos says the Dutch party leader put €20,000 of her own money into the campaign.
The Spanish Libertas campaign only received a ‘fraction’ of the €4m it had been promised, the Volkskrant said. Campaign leader Miguel Duran is working on a legal claim against Ganley, together with the French and Portuguese parties. ‘The Dutch branch is welcome to join us,’ he told the Volkskrant.
Grateful thanks to the person who pointed this out to me…
James Connolly Memorial Lecture: Economics for workers, speaker John Foster, lecturer in economics, Communist Party of Britain. June 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, European Politics, Irish Politics.19 comments
This looks very interesting indeed. It’s on next Tuesday at 7.30 and is a CPI event.
