Job subsidies redux. July 3, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
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?
Morgan Kelly is back with an interesting piece in the Irish Times today on the implications of the debt buden that NAMA nay impose – “The drift into national bankruptcy looks increasingly unstoppable.”
“Debt trap’ warning
The cost of our debt could spiral out of control if we don’t press on with swingeing cutbacks”
Is how the Indo puts it, with a rather different but familiar emphasis.
Paula Clancy of TASC makes the same point about lefties and academics in the letters page of today’s IT.
The overriding characteristic of contributors to PE@Tasc is that they come from the political left. Some are academics, some are not. The most prolific either are not academic or do not identify themselves (e.g. Sli Eile) to be characterised one way or another. Contributors on the Irish Economy site are predominantly, but not exclusively, from academia. There is a range of opinions across the political spectrum and quite a few cross postings from PE@TASC.
So labelling one ‘lefties’ or ‘progressives’ and the other ‘academics’ seems reasonable enought to me. You may be attributing more subtlety to Sarah Carey than she deserves.
Swa that alastair. A lot of food for thought there. Hard not to agree wiht him that if it weren’t for NAMA our position would be difficult but far for impossible, but with NAMA we’re really in trouble.
Crocodile, that’s what’s so frustrating about the debate. Whatever cutbacks from the public sector we try to make, and Morgan’s piece in painting just how dire matters are is relevant here, may not be sufficient to bridge the gap, and not just if the NAMA ship goes down under its own weight.
I take your point PT, but I tend to the idea that if Paula Clancy feels that the categorisation by Carey is unfair and its a blog organised under the aegis of the organisation she (PC) works for it’s far from unreasonable to take her at her word. Maybe it’s a reflexive knee-jerk opinion on the lefts part, but Carey is never shy of suggesting as she clearly did in the original piece that union and left wing policies were childish as distinct from the orthodoxy she promotes (not terribly efficiently in my opinion to judge from the response).