The luckiest man in the Green Party? August 18, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.16 comments
Not quite, not now, but if a report in the Sunday Business Post is anywhere near correct then it would seem that the potential for the retention of another seat (I’d already think Sargent and White would be most strongly positioned to keep theirs come the dread day) is increasing…
For John Gormley could only have smiled at the news that:
The viability of incinerators in Ireland is under threat after John Gormley, the Minister for the Environment, received new advice about capping the amount of public waste they burn.
The Green Party minister has been told that no more than 25per cent of all biodegradable municipal refuse collected nationally should be burned in incinerators. The recommendation comes from an expert group commissioned to advise the minister on strategic waste policy.
The group also proposes that local authorities be prevented from entering into or renewing contracts to supply biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) to incinerators.
And the practical ramifications of this?
If the proposals are adopted as policy by the minister – who is strongly opposed to incineration – they would reduce significantly the viability of large scale incineration projects.
And…
Applying the new proposals to that figure, the aggregated capacity of all licensed incinerators would be capped at 690,000 tonnes – and later reduced to 570,000 tonnes. However, these figures do not account for the diversion of waste to incinerators from landfill.
Which would have particular implications in his… er… back yard…of Dublin South East.
There are already question marks over the amount of waste likely to be incinerated. For example, the planned incinerator at Poolbeg in Dublin -which is in Gormley’s Dublin South East constituency – proposes to burn 600,000 tonnes of waste a year under a municipal waste supply agreement with the capital’s five local authorities.
And…
The company behind the deal, Dublin Waste to Energy, signed an agreement with Dublin City Council which is charge of the capital’s waste management plan. However, Gormley’s new policy direction document states that local authorities should ‘‘ensure that incineration capacity is limited, to ensure that waste is not drawn to incineration which could have been dealt with by recycling or other methods higher up the waste hierarchy’’.
The proposals follow the minister’s decision to issue a circular earlier this year, when he said that he planned to ‘‘press ahead’’ with measures to curb incineration and landfill in favour of recycling. Those measures will include a levy on incineration, which will be shared by the companies involved in incinerating waste and any local authority which has an existing contractual arrangement to sell waste to a private incineration plant.
My sense is that the incinerator has killed Gormley on the ground in a way no other issue has. You might laugh, given all else that has happened, but all politics remains local, as it were. He can only be hoping that the SBP has got it right.
If he were able to claim this as his own achievement… well, he’d still have the electoral hill of hills to climb, but it would be just that little bit less steep.
An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí… where exactly? August 18, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.8 comments
It’s funny being off line for four days or so as I was last week. Firstly one turns to newspapers, as in printed newspapers. And then there is the television news. But the latter is difficult to synchronise with when one is busy and days are time tabled and the former requires at least some space to check through in a consistent way. So… I missed a fair old bit of the international news as I focused on what the Irish Times likes to term ‘opinion’.
And there were some doozies last week. No doubt about that. In part because the economic free fall appears to be slowing, perhaps even stopping completely with ‘good’ news not merely from the United States, but Europe as well. And… what’s this, an increase in retail sales in the last two months. Although, the Irish Times, never keen to allow the good news to seem too good was at pains to point out that with prices falling the governments headaches as regards tax receipts was merely starting. Hmmmm… yes, well, a deflationary policy within a recessionary economy will have that sort of an effect.
But… what was most frustrating for me was to read material and be unable to check it for facts. For example (and this is only one of a number) what of Orna Mulcahy’s piece entitled ‘Long-term benefits of shorter school breaks’. You might expect a carefully considered analysis of the topic, but if so you’d come away – as I did – unfulfilled. For this was the sort of phoned in stuff that predominates the pages of the Irish Times at the moment. And… while it is indeed what we laughably term ‘summer’ on this island that’s hardly an excuse for shoddy examination of an area – particularly when the rationale of the piece is to argue for a shorter… er…summer.
So, while you might think that it started well… with a question that might be amenable to some answer…
How can Ireland claim to have a world-class education system if it has one of the shortest academic years?
The depressing reality was that even the most cursory consideration demonstrated that there was no way… no way on earth… Mulcahy was going to seriously engage with the area.
WE’RE ALL done with the holidays in this household. We’ve been away and had cousins to stay. We’ve sent the children to camp and to Irish college, and welcomed them back with gala barbecues.
We’ve been to the beach, seen Harry Potter and gone shopping for new shoes and pencil cases. The books are covered and in the bag. Now, surely is it not time for them to be back at school? You would think so but no. There’s still almost a fortnight left before term starts officially in the week of September 1st. The older two have been off since the end of May.
And… beyond this charming insight into chez Mulcahy and the domestic tranquility therein… what though of those unable to afford ‘camp’ and “Irish college’… or indeed the gala barbecues? Or what of those not quite so fortunate in running their lives in such a way that the rest of the world must conform with their expectations?
It may be that their first week back is shorter than normal as teachers ease themselves into the job. Some reorientation may be necessary for those who’ve enjoyed a full three-month break as information will have been erased. I’m not knocking teachers. After a fortnight away from my own desk, I need retraining.
Well, that presumably is the usage of the term ‘I’m not knocking teachers’ in the rather less usual way where it means ‘I’m knocking teachers’.
But the slow start-up to the academic year is baffling, as is the fairly rapid wind-down, with the odd hiatus in between.
Parents can expect gaps in the week for curriculum familiarisation days, staff training, swine flu preparation workshops, and so on until the mid-term break in October and after that, sure it’s nearly Christmas.
Yeah, I used to make similar jokes about places I worked in. In at nine. Break at 11. Soon it is lunch. It’s easy stuff. But… joke or not, perhaps she’d prefer there was no swine flu preparation? Or perhaps teachers shouldn’t continue training through their careers and so on…
My generation grew up being told that Ireland has an education system second to none, but how can that be when children spend so few days in school? We have one of the shortest academic years in the world, with one of the longest summer holidays, designed back in the 1920s to suit an agricultural economy and not given much thought since. The school year is a mere 183 days at primary level compared to an average of 195 for Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development countries and more than 200 for east Asian countries.
It’s even shorter at post-primary level, with schools obliged to open for just 167 days in the year.
According to a recent report in the Economist magazine, long summer holidays and short academic terms are making the children of the West lazy and forgetful. It claims that over the summer break the average child forgets a month’s worth of tuition in many subjects and almost three times that in maths.
No wonder so many of them fall down in higher maths.
No doubt. There’s a problem though. And it’s one of actually quite basic math, or at least an ability to read statistical data.
Actually though – my mistake – there are many problems. Can you guess what they might be? Well, let me give you a clue. First there are facts. Secondly there is interpretation based on facts.
For although the year is ‘short’ the hours are long. We are, and I have an OECD report downloadable here to back this up, in the higher ranks of OECD countries when it comes to teaching hours. Ahead of Germany, Portugal, France, Denmark (by a country mile), Italy Finland, etc… Indeed in terms of the EU we’re out there almost in front…. Which might provide some answer to her original question.
But, so keen on ploughing forward into her pit of despond she continues…
American academics have come up with a handy term for the phenomenon, “summer learning loss”. Barack Obama is concerned, as well he might be with two young children going through the system. He has asked school administrators to rethink the school day, in other words, to make it longer.
Sure… That makes sense. No, hold on. Actually it doesn’t, not least since ‘making the school day longer’ isn’t the problem she was raising in the first place. Indeed it was quite a different one of Summer holidays being too long.
And if she thinks making school days longer is a good thing perhaps she should look at research that shows…
BOLDUAN: But more time is no silver bullet for reform. Miami- Dade County schools in Florida used an extended day program for three years, but dropped it because they didn’t see improvement in test scores. Critics say it disrupts family life and is expensive. The Miami-Dade program cost more than $100 million.
MARTA PEREZ, MIAMI DADE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD: The teachers were fatigued at the end of the day the students were fatigued and unmotivated.
And if we actually bother to look up ‘Summer Learning Loss’ we see something interesting. Something very interesting indeed. For those students from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds fare worse than their middle class peers. Indeed the summer gap is actually good (particularly in terms of reading skills) for those students from middle class homes.
But again, read the literature and you’ll find that the answer, if we can describe it as such, to ‘summer learning loss’ isn’t increasing the ‘school day… in other words making it longer’, but reducing the length of school holidays.
There’s a further problem, though, to that. Because… the US models tend to distribute much the same number of days across the year. And the way they square the circle is by having instead of a long summer vacation four three week breaks distributed throughout the year. I’m not sure how that’s much of an improvement if the issue is keeping the youngsters in school. And there’s a body of thought which suggests that one then exchanges a single bloc of ‘learning loss’ with a number of shorter blocs distributed throughout the year. No gain.
And if one hopes that that is where the problems end let me direct you to this report by US think tank Education Sector which lays out some other structural problems about doing away with Summer vacations including increased costs of use and upkeep of buildings to as the report states:
Also, entire industries—transportation, child care, food service—have been designed to align with current school schedules. Tourism and camping industries vigorously oppose school-time reform proposals, predicting financial losses if summer vacation is reduced.
Resort and restaurant owners worry that more school in summer will mean fewer young people to hire for their businesses. And states and districts that rely on summer tourism for revenue are also wary of shorter summers.
Ironically in the US, unlike our beloved isle:
The strongest opposition to extending school into the summer or throughout the year comes from middle-class and affluent parents who see no real benefit for their own children for giving up the vacation schedule they have come to expect.
That’s mad stuff, isn’t it? Like, assertions – undigested, ill thought through assertions have ramifications… Didn’t see that one coming.
But it gets worse. For Mulcahy, caught up in this maelstrom of Irish middle class enthusiasm, it can only be but a short hop to outright catastrophe.
Meanwhile, management consultancy McKinsey is arguing that the poor performance of American schoolchildren will have a more devastating long-term effect on the US economy than the recession. Before long, the brain jobs will follow the brawn jobs. Parents, it warns, will see their children’s jobs taken by the Chinese.
Yeah, but presumably, from what the literature tells us it won’t be middle class school children.
Frankly, I’m terrified.
She shouldn’t be. Remember, it’s not the middle classes that are hardest hit by this.
With a Leaving and a Junior Cert candidate in the house, the issue is sharply in focus. I’m prepared to do what I can. There’ll be plenty of oily fish on the menu and a good angle poise lamp in each of their bedrooms. If I have to, I’ll read King Lear , but I’d feel happier if they were facing into a longer school year with not quite so many random gaps and half-days.
And if she’s going to treat the subject glibly, I make no apology for the tone of my thoughts on her treatment.
That’s not to be, judging by the 09/10 timetable slipped in between the book list and the fees demand. It runs to two pages, and there are at least three Mondays marked “no classes for junior or senior school”. Why? Call me cynical but it smacks of a nice long weekend for all concerned. “Could be any number of reasons,” a teacher friend tells me. “In-house training. Then we had a ‘dignity in the workplace’ day once and then there are report conferences where we get together to do the reports.”
Hmmm… which yet again is a different issue from Summer holidays. Although ‘fees demand’? That the majority of us should be so favoured with the situation for our off-spring (although knowing what I know about the attitude of the fee-charging sector, and not just from those Oireachtas committees, I’m not so sure it’s money well spent or wisely invested).
He’s all for change and wouldn’t mind adopting a more European school year model, with just six weeks holidays in the summer, but says he won’t go on the record in case a colleague slashes his tyres in the car park.
Oh please. Yeah. Those tyre-slashing teaches. Quite the on-going danger they are. Really, when we hit this level of anecdote surely it’s time to go back to the blueprints and start again.
Teachers will tell you the Irish school day is longer and more intense than the European model, and that children are exhausted by March or April, especially if they sign up for extra study periods (at a cost of over €100 per term in some cases).
Erm… and not just teachers. That pesky OECD – eh?
Parents who can afford it will extend the academic year further by enrolling children in expensive preparation and revision courses, run by private colleges like the Institute of Education, where next week, some of the country’s best teachers will be available for a “get ready for the Leaving Cert” week of tuition.
It’s a lucrative nixer, and what else have they to be doing at this stage of the summer?
Which is an argument of such breath taking… well, you know what I’m thinking… that it’s hard to believe she’d make it. How many teachers out of the total teaching population of teachers do such ‘nixers’ (and worth pointing out that those who do – and I’m no fan at all of such institutions – are acting entirely within current employment legislation – if there’s a problem she could lobby to have the certificate mills shut down, but somehow I think we’d see a perfect example of middle class hissy fit ensue if y’know, something concrete was done to take away the ‘rights’ of parents)? How many places are available for them? And again, if this sort of anecdotal stuff is the best she can do, perhaps we’re in worse trouble than we generally think we are.
As for the topic at hand?
There’s no doubt about it. The issues as regards class are serious and should be a source of – at least – further investigation by leftists. Whether the apocalyptic outcomes she paints are correct is hard to gauge. Educational structures are fairly varied across the OECD but there’s little evidence at the national level that somehow Irish (or indeed US) children are significantly impacted by ‘summer learning loss’. But look, I’m no expert on this and it’s up to people to read the literature and come to their own conclusions.
I can see a valid argument for a reworking of the school year with, say, a two month break over the Summer. I’ve always felt that a three month break is simply too long and not merely for school children but also for teachers (and I believe the same is true of third level too).
But the counter argument on that level is whether the sort of measures Mulcahy pushes around lightly on her conceptual plate are the solution is a different matter entirely. Not least in a context where we have an educational infrastructure that is in many many cases notional if not indeed entirely aspirational (and for those who want proof I can only recommend a visit to the grandly termed ‘computer labs’ of the average VEC or a perusal of the school building programme). Little point in pouring school children into rickety and under funded and under resourced schools. But that sort of fundamental stuff isn’t what the IT does these days – or at least not in its ‘opinion’ pieces.
Thing is, and given the above, broadly speaking we have some reasonably good educational outcomes (and, by the by, for a much more sensible article on our current situation Karlin Lillington – who has to be one of the more reliable IT columnists – has some thoughts that should be required reading for all those who continue to cry ‘doom’), often achieved against the odds.
But… I see little evidence in the figures that there are insufficient teaching hours and any such reworking would presumably see those teaching hours stretched out over a longer time period with a consequent shortening of the school day/and or increase in days off elsewhere. Is that what Mulcahy wants? She doesn’t say. Somehow, I suspect, we’ll never know.
And for those who say this is just a light Summer piece in the IT, well, my belief is that on a subject like this where we see actual class issues writ large across a number of axes then it requires something a little bit more weighty than a ‘light’ Summer piece, and something with a tone that rises significantly above the glib. Twenty minutes or so is what it took me to hunt down some considered opinion on the area. Something that offers a more balanced view of positives and negatives. And I’m not paid to do this sort of thing.
Irish Left Archive [Remembering 1969]: Statement from the Republican Movement, 15 August 1969 August 17, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive (Remembering 1969).1 comment so far
This document suggests a slightly different analysis than that offered by the August statement of the IRA. For example the word socialism is not used once and the demands are essentially process based, ‘immediate disarming of the B Specials’, ‘withdrawal of British troops’ and so forth.
What’s also of interest is the idea expressed that ‘we reject the call issued by some misguided elements of the NICRA for direct rule from Westminster and suspension of Stormont’… and ‘those who make this call have not thought of the dangerous implications… for the next step after that would be London doing a deal with Lynch and the unionists, and bringing the whole of ireland into a federal United Kingdom’.
Irish Left Archive [Remembering 1969]: Irish Republican Army Statement – August 1969 August 17, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive (Remembering 1969), Sinn Féin.2 comments
A short document, signed by Cathal Goulding, that outlines the rationale the IRA was using at this point in time.
Note that it asserts that…
Already Northern units of the IRA have been in action in defence of the lives and homes of the people which have been attacked by deliberately fomented sectarian forces, backed up by the B-Specials, with the aim of destroying the natural solidarity and unity of working class people.
Note also that these actions are couched within ‘defensive operations’. It is striking that it refers to ‘all too limited resources’.
Beyond that it’s intriguing that it overtly states that ‘the Republican Movement has been committed to support the moderate demands of the CRM in the genuine hope that reforms obtained by constitutional agitation would provide a framework withing which a peaceful settlement might be arrived at…’ and that ‘we have been reluctantly compelled into military action’.
It also warns the London government that ‘you will have to take the consequences’.
It’s the Economy, Stupid! August 17, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in The Left.78 comments
Is the Left missing its biggest chance for at least a generation? That is the topic of a most interesting article in today’s Guardian that I think says a number of true and very important things that the Left as a whole needs to face up to. The article examines the viewpoints of a spectrum of people from the broad left. Its main hook is the author’s impression of the atmosphere at the British SWP’s Marxism 2009 event earlier this summer in London, but it also takes in the views of people like Jon Cruddas, and briefly discusses the problems posed for the left by the rise of green politics.
As the article notes, and as has been discussed here in the past, the most important structural factor that the British left faces is the collapse of the left as a social and cultural as well as a political force. What I mean by this is that for many working class people growing up in industrial areas or mining villages the left offered a complete philosophy and social habits that genuinely shaped many people’s everyday lives. It wasn’t just the working day, it was the trade union membership, the socialising in the workingmen’s or labour party club, and the culture of reading books to raise one’s political consciousness. The same was true in parts of Ireland (although obivously unionism complicated the relationship of NI’s proletariat to socialism). I don’t want to romanticise the past as obviously this was far from true of everybody, and there remained a very strong right-wing working class vote. But what we can say is that a whole culture of left-wing activism and self-education that was strong in the not so distant past has virtually disappeared. And it has weakened the left’s ability to reach out to people, as a collective consciousness and indeed a class consciousness has greatly weakened. The article puts it much more clearly than I have managed
Until well into the Thatcher era, the left in Britain was a complete and vigorous political world. It had a mass membership through the unions and the Labour party. It had credibility and charismatic figures: even establishment papers such as the Times feared and sometimes respected Tony Benn or the National Union of Mineworkers. And it had potent ideas from the likes of Gramsci and Marx and Keynes. All of these elements have decayed since the 80s; but none so damagingly, especially in the light of the financial crisis, as the left’s thinking about the economy.
In my view, this is the most important criticism in the article – that of the attitude of today’s left to economics. The article quotes an economist saying that “The left just gave up on economics”. There is a great deal of truth in this. It’s not that the a lot of the left doesn’t recognise the importance of economics – after all, Marxism is based on it. But as the further left has shrunk its capacity to produce detailed critiques and alternative policies has done so too. One of my favourite themes is that an overlooked part of the success of The Workers’ Party during the 1970s and 1980s was the Research Section under Eamon Smullen, which produced documents like The Great Irish Oil and Gas Robbery as well as material on the banks and the nuclear power industry. Whatever one thinks of these documents, they acted to convince people that this was a party that thought seriously about a range of issues. I just don’t see anything similar being produced today, at least not with the same reach. Michael Taft over on Notes from the Front and the Progressive Economy blog are doing a lot of good work, as is Conor Mc Cabe at Dublin Opinion, but unfortunately they have not had the same impact. Partly, I would argue, because they are not part of a political party that can marry an economic to a political vision (as one might expect me to argue), but also because the space and acceptance for left-wing ideas in public discourse has massively shrunk even since the 1990s.
If the far left is incapable due to issues of resources of producing the type of documents it once did, what of the centre left? The simple answer is that the centre left has all but abandoned any discussion of the economic basis of society. Instead of a material basis for its arguments, it has instead concentrated on “values”. So we hear a lot of discussion of fairness and equality, but no mention that equality of opportunity and merit are impossible when there are massive disparities of wealth that shape social, cultural, educational and job opportunities from before a child is born. Personally, I think this rot set in with 1968, the beginning of the period when identity politics became the focus for many on the left to the exclusion of material considerations. We can see this in many aspects of life. Not just in social democracy abandoning its belief in kenysianism for the market, but also in the intellectual and cultural sphere.
Gone (largely) are the materialists from the universities for example. Many who were on the left and who stressed the importance of economics and class in fields like philosophy, history, political science, even literature, twenty or thirty years ago have retreated into cultural analysis and explanations. I believe in the power of ideas, and the left has often in the past been too slow to realise the significance of ideology in the broad sense, but any analysis not grounded in material reality will not and cannot serve as a proper guide to politics. It is a shame that attempts to recognise the importance of ideology (often applying a version of Gramsci) ended up in the cul-de-sac of retreating from class politics, and consequently a decline into insignificance. The history of the New Left or of the CPGB in the later 1970s and 1980s typifies this pattern. People who began by seeking to apply Marxism creatively ended up in shallow cultural politics. Some of those who became involved in Democratic Left in Ireland are also excellent examples.
If the left in any form is to gain serious traction once more, we must apply ourselves to serious economic analysis of society. Not just in understanding how the crisis in the financial sector has left us where we are, but also to the issues of putting forward alternative programmes to those offered by the right in its various forms. There is also the issue of what the changing economic basis of these islands means for the left, and how we can engage with workers in an economy dominated to such an extent by the service sector, and including a much larger proportion of people from elsewhere, who are not part of the stable communities that once formed the social and political backbone of these islands. We are all aware of the issues – rising individualism, casualisation, falling trade union membership, fewer people involved in politics, or even interested in it. But we must put more effort into finding solutions. Again, the issue is put more succintly in the article.
“What is the underlying social force that’s going to be the basis of the left? In the mid-20th century it was the factory worker and the union member. There are far fewer of them now.” Solnit says: “I don’t see the networks in which great ideas circulate.”
We cannot claim that socialism will make a better society unless we can demonstrate how that can happen practically; unless we go beyond declarations of principles and fine words. Part of that struggle is to re-engage people with the idea of state-directed action. A large part of the problem for the left is not that there has been no resistance to global capitalism in its modern form since the rise of capitalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but rather in the forms that that resistance has taken. Somewhat like 1968, the mass anti-capitalist protests of the 1990s produced very little in the way of political change, and the radicalism of a great part of a generation was wasted. The rise of Green politics, especially in Ireland, has proven to be an obstacle to the re-establishment of socialism as an effective political force. Not only has it drained off activists with radical instincts, its message – sometimes more explicit, sometimes less – is that the environment is above traditional (for which read class) politics. The right wing instincts of many greens can be seen across Europe, and especially in our own coalition.
The rise of NGOs is another problem for the left. The sense that politics can be bypassed by direct agitation or work on single issues is fundamentally an obscurantist one. Ideas like the following will not and cannot re-invigorate the left as an alternative vision for the whole of society
“Actually, our society is full of alternative ways of organising things” – he cites the success of the Co-operative Bank, built on ethical investments – “but the left desperately needs a developed ideology . . . an analysis of society.”
The second part of the message is certainly correct, but anyone who thinks that socialism means ethical investments is probably not the person to provide us with that developed ideology. In a world where Cameron’s Tories can apparently creditably vie for the title of the real progressives in British politics or where Eamonn Gilmore says savage cuts in the public sector should be doable, then rhetoric will not be enough. Blair sounds like Cameron sounds like Cowen sounds like Kenny. But also sounds a lot like many of those further to the left. We need serious economic policies. Which means – certainly for people like me – that a lot of people on the left are going to have to start looking at economics a lot more thoroughly than we have done up to now. “We’ve had a hollowed-out generation of economic thinkers.” Time for us to change that.
How to further wreck the country: Fianna Fáil does it again August 16, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Transport.14 comments
Reading today’s Sunday Times as I do most weeks (at least until the great Rupert locks it behind a firewall anyway), I was somewhat stunned to see this story about government plans for CIE. You would think that the fact that blind faith in the private sector has just destroyed the economy might register. Or at least the lessons of Britain’s experience of transport privitisation, never mind say France or Italy’s excellent public train services. But no. Apparently not.
According to the paper, the Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, will bring a bill before the Dáil in the autumn that will provide for fines or the putting out of routes to tender to private firms if legally-binding targets are not met. This from the same government that is cutting Dublin Bus services. Hypocrisy and shamelessness of the highest order. In case the minister is reading, the consequences of privitisation in Britain has been huge hikes in prices on trains while safety standards fell. So far did they fall, that New Labour had to take Network Rail back into public ownership. At the same time, private firms have had their licences revoked so poor has been their service. So this has been the worst of all worlds for the public, who have lost out as taxpayers and as individual consumers as well.
Now, I am not against government putting pressure on publicly-owned companies to get results and deliver an efficient service. From each according to his means and to each according to his needs is not a recipe for laziness and inefficiency (not that I am suggesting CIE workers are either). Quite the opposite. Efficiency lies at the very heart of the socialist project – the efficient use of society’s material and human resources in the interests of all. But scapegoating public sector workers as an excuse to give private companies a licence to print money bears no relation to socialist plans for an efficient public sector. This bill will have the effect of demoralising workers in CIE in already difficult times. In it, we can see that the PDs may be dead, but their ideology remains dominant in this government. Profiteering is a recipe for disaster, not efficiency.
And what of the junior partners in the coalition? We’ve already seen them disgrace themselves numerous times over green issues, but the thought of allowing the profit motive to be the determining element in the delivery of an already shaky public transport system should surely be enough on top of everything else to start some serious hardball tactics with FF to insist on some progressive policies. I won’t hold my breath.
Now here’s someone who’s not going to take it anymore… August 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Northern Ireland.9 comments
Niall O’Dowd writes in the Irish Times today. And he’s certainly writing. The focus of the article is an article by Niall Stanage from a week ago (I meant to get to that latter article since it makes some very curious assertions… worth reading in full though).
It starts as it means to go on…
I TAKE very strong issue with the piece by Niall Stanage – “Clinton saga highlights ludicrous notions about importance of Irish in America” (August 8th). I am the person he is referring to as spreading an “unsourced” story about Hillary Clinton becoming effectively the special envoy to Northern Ireland. I feel he has made an unwarranted and utterly wrong series of allegations about me and Irish America. His screed is so full of inaccuracies as to be laughable for any knowledgeable Irish American observer.
Take that… and this…
Stanage fails to understand Irish America. He cites Clinton as stating that she “did not see the need for someone full-time” as an envoy as reason to presume she has no real interest in it. There has never been a full-time envoy since George Mitchell nor is there ever likely to be one and no one has ever called for one. The fact that Clinton will personally be handling the issue as against lower-level state department personnel is a huge step up, not a step down, as Stanage tries to indicate. In addition there will be an economic envoy – another major step which he is clearly clueless about.
Pow!
With regard to Irish America: Stanage is not long enough in America to understand what occurred during the peace process here. It was Irish America which won the visa for Gerry Adams which helped create the IRA ceasefire. It was Irish America which first put forward the envoy proposal which became the George Mitchell initiative and most importantly it was Irish America which first reached out to then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton to become involved in Ireland. How this signals a lack of clout is a mystery.
Biff!
He tosses off the usual cockamamie quotes about no Irish Americans ever voting en masse on Irish issues. Whoever said they did? What we in Irish America have done is harnessed support around positions of interest to us such as immigration reform and Northern Ireland. To that end we have cultivated important relationships through fundraising, extensive canvassing at elections and creating personal contacts with many key figures. We are no different in that respect to any other ethnic group.
Crash!
As for present-day clout, Stanage obviously does not know about the Irish Government Diaspora conference in Dublin in September which will see over 100 top Irish American businessmen and women from the US come to Ireland to discuss the ties between the two countries and the economic benefits that can accrue.
The Diaspora conference is modelled on one that we at Irish America magazine have hosted these past few years in conjunction with UCD. Is this what Stanage refers to as a dead-end strategy having Fortune 500 executives in large numbers come to Ireland at a critical time?
And the unkindest cut of all?
He also disparages our work on behalf of the undocumented Irish. Probably that’s easy to do for an Oxford University educated chap who has never experienced the desperation our illegal community feels at this time. Quixotic our quest could well be but it will not stop us trying to help our fellow Irish men and women live normal lives in America.
And if you think that’s good, check out this in Irish Central (hat-tip to Pete Baker on Slugger O’Toole for that) where someone or another waxes further lyrical on the topic.
My view for what it’s worth? Stanage in his piece considerably underplayed the continuing influence of Irish America on the US political system and to my mind bought into or expressed the trope that when it boils down to it we – the Irish – have an inflated notion of our place in the world. Well, that’s true-ish, but… there’s little doubt that the Clinton White House desperate for good international news on his watch invested considerable time and energy in a process that they could, as their predecessors did, have avoided. O’Dowd by contrast most likely overplays it, it certainly seems as if Ireland is off the radar (although, although, the peculiar image of Cowen in Washington remains with me despite my best efforts) – but then he’s been on the inside, or at least half on the inside, of many of the more pivotal events that have shaped the relationships between the US and Ireland, and have shaped relationships within Ireland. It was intriguing to see how his initial championing of Clinton redux faltered as time and events pushed Obama to the fore, but, for all that he’s done, as the phrase has it, the state some small service.
Fascinating to see the usually calm, and to my mind predictable, waters of the Irish Times disturbed in this way. Next stop? Whatever response Stanage makes…
BTW: Incidentally, scroll down the comments section on the O’Dowd piece in the IT and you’ll – I hope – have a good laugh at some perspectives on the birth of ‘international terrorism’. Seems it was our fault all along. Now that’s quite some conceptual trick, to agree with Stanage that we’ve delusions of grandeur as regards our place in the world while pointing the finger back at ourselves for introducing the serpent into the global garden. Cultural cringe and unwarranted egocentricity in one. You’ve got to love it.
The Swastika and the Laundry: Redux August 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History, Irish Politics.6 comments
I’m indebted to Tadhg McGrath for forwarding a slice of Irish social and commercial history to the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
For those who missed the backstory the Swastika Laundry has been dealt with in part here on the CLR. The subsequent discussion in the comments covers the ground in a useful way.
This also dovetails neatly with our discussion centred on the Seán Russell statue in Fairview (incidentally, latest update, I was cycling past earlier in the week and the white roundels on the Nazi flags had been overpainted with the Peace symbol popularised by CND). I can’t help but think that both typify an insularity and ignorance as to the world beyond our shores during the time period. And Tadhg raises an interesting point when he notes that ‘It’s funny how little documentary proof exists that the place existed, certainly on the web’.
Photo copyright Tadhg McGrath.
This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… The Long Ryders, State of Our Union August 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....add a comment
The Long Ryders, always in my book the finest of the Paisley Underground bands (and by the way there’s allegedly a Prince cross-over with that particular genre, also a good sign in that very same book of mine), and not only – but in no small part – because they had a political head on them that was both crafty and fed directly into the lyrics. Their first album, Native Sons, was a treasure, but the second – State of Our Union – is the one that I find I return to more often.
Sid Griffin is, surely, one of the great characters of – well, whatever genre you choose to fit the Long Ryders into, the others in the band no less so (and its heartening to see how they are mostly still active). And collectively the sound they made (and indeed are making given that they reformed) a fine combination of Byrds like harmonies and 12 strings – the Byrds reference being almost obligatory you see when referencing them, it’s a ‘y’ thing – was melodic but also in places surprisingly harsh. Again, we can thank one Mr. Griffin for that with his raspy vocals.
I mentioned politics, and even a casual awareness of their lyrical concerns would see them placed as of the left, but in a way which was strengthened rather than weakened by a sense of humour and a genuine love for the culture of which they were a part. The song titles alone indicated this: “Good Times Tomorrow, Hard Times Today” and “Two Kinds of Love”
(which btw some enterprising goth band should cover, it’d make for a great melancholy track), “Mason Dixie Line” and so forth… Songs that mentioned Gram and WDIA (the Memphis R&B radio station that helped introduce black culture to white listeners), songs that pilloried Reagan and the Reagan ‘revolution’, that gave some sense of what life was like for working class Americans, songs that were above all songs and not just retreads of the Byrds or … or… whoever you care to mention. Again, I think it was that punk, or post-punk, fuelled energy that gave them an edge that for me some of their contemporaries in the Paisley Underground, however fine, lacked.
Looking at these tracks on YouTube, and it’s amazing isn’t it how it allows one to see even a taste of the entirety of a musical experience in a way that was simply impossible even a decade ago, what I find remarkable is how good they were. In a parallel universe they’d have been huge. And even in this one, to some, they are.
Looking for Lewis and Clark
Lights of Downtown
I had a Dream (from the first album, but – hey, it’s a limited selection on YouTube)
I want you bad
State of My Union (live)
