This weekend I’ll be mostly listening to… The Last Days of Disco December 12, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to..., Uncategorized.29 comments
It’s party time, well, it would be if I were ten years younger, there wasn’t a recession and I didn’t have responsibilities. Okay, granted at such events the kitchen has always been my chosen destination. And what’s not to like? Food, beer and a place to sit. And let’s be honest, there are few who think of Hole in the Sky by Sabbath as… party music. So my taste tends not to intersect, or at least not until more recently when I found that ferociously hip people were devoting far too much time to collating unfeasibly esoteric playlists on their iPods for just that purpose. Still, no Sabbath though.
And yet, that said, there is a part of me that sort of enjoys parties. And it’s that part which having seen the movie the Last Days of Disco way back when said, feck the plot although Whit Stillman’s movie is good. But the soundtrack and the music on it is great…
It’s great in a way that the Fleshtones or Chic are great. And that’s not coincidental, because Chic are on the soundtrack.
I don’t mean this in a kitsch or ironic way. I love these tracks. I really do. I think they’re excellent music, and even if in genres which I’m not usually into that much – although I note I’m very slightly more partial to the soul tracks, and that makes sense being already hugely into Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield by the time I heard this sound track – doesn’t diminish my love for them. In part perhaps due to the way in which all good music of a certain time makes you want to have been there, however briefly – and yes, I was there in the sense of being alive, but I sure as hell wasn’t hanging around outside Studio 54 in 1978.
It’s a classic collection of soul and disco. You know it is.
Trailer from the movie…
I’m coming out… [Live - donchaknow...]
The O’Jays…
Evelyn King – Shame
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes – The Love I Lost
Alicia Bridges I Love the Nightlife
Knock on Wood – Amii Stewart
Gogarty v Stagg December 11, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Irish Politics.24 comments
I haven’t laughed so much in ages. And I hope not only Gogarty, but the rest of his party lose their seats as well. They know this is the wrong thing, and they are doing it anyway. It’s not bravery, it’s cowardice.
Courtesy of Mack at Sluggerotoole, Youtube footage. Even better than the audio.
Bill Gates loves the CLR! ;) December 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in CLR empirebuilding, Uncategorized.3 comments
Okay, something a bit less depressing than the news and less enraging than sockpuppetry… (thanks to Garibaldy for spotting it).
Check this out… 
Latest from Irish Election Literature Blog December 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Irish Politics, The Left.add a comment
Thanks as usual to AK for the latest batch….There are some amazing pieces of material here… and not all from the left. If you like this stuff do leave a comment either here or on the IELB…. I think he’s doing those of us who’re interested in the material aspects of the promotion of Irish politics a real favour. As he writes:
A few highlights this week….
‘Party Pizzas- The Election Selection’ from John O’Neill of the ISN. Its simply superb.
From 1987 Paddy Gallagher and Tony Wright in Waterford. I hadn’t put the 87 Workers Party Leaflet up before this.
Jimmy Hogan, Workers Party 1985 Greystones Town Commission
Then…
Emmet Stagg – Cuts kill defend your rights from 1989
Also from 1985 I really love the anti coalition Donegal Labour Party. They are able to give out about the government they are part of.
Richard Boyd Barrett from 2007 in Dun Laoghaire
and finally…
The Letter that got Cyprian Brady elected in 2007. (also known as letter that shafted Mary Fitzpatrick)
I think the DLP and the Cyprian Brady material is of particular interest. But so is the WP in Waterford, an old bastion of the party.
Yes, another review of the Lost Revolution December 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.52 comments
But well worth a read from yourcousin, comrade of the CLR (and vice versa)…
Meanwhile back at the Seanad… Dec 2009 December 11, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.3 comments
From Wednesday’s debate…
Senator Frances Fitzgerald: It is clear the Government has created a climate of fear and anxiety about the budget in bringing the country to the edge of a financial precipice and I do not believe the people have confidence that it will bring us back from it. I want to raise questions today – we will be discussing the budget tomorrow – about the values it will foster. I point to one issue about which serious questions must be asked. It appears, for example, that the price of alcohol will be reduced but what values will be fostered in terms of job creation and competitiveness?
Senator David Norris: Hear, hear.
Senator Frances Fitzgerald: I point to another issue, the welfare of children. We will discuss the Murphy report later. We have had the Ryan report and an implementation plan for it from the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews. The implementation plan is excellent but will resources be made available for it? We have heard so much talk about the need to protect children in the aftermath of the Ryan and Murphy reports but are we only paying lip service to the issue? Will resources be made available, despite the financial difficulties we are facing, to protect children and implement the recommendations made in the reports? That is the critical question.
It looks as if the Government will attack children by cutting child benefit which, I have no doubt, will have a dreadful effect on families and children. Families are extremely worried about the cut and the implications for their weekly budgets and children. We will watch the budget very carefully today to see what values it espouses and if resources will be provided to ensure more than lip service will be paid to the protection of children.
Cutting back the work of the Office of the Ombudsman for Children is not the way to proceed, in the same way as getting rid of the Combat Poverty Agency, the Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority was not the right direction in which to move at this time of difficulty. We will have a debate in the House tomorrow and will see how the budget plays out.
A most interesting exchange…
Senator Joe O’Toole: I note that the Garda Commissioner has written to the Garda representative bodies to say members of the force will break the law if they take strike action. I do not know about that and would like to have the matter clarified in the House. I do not know what law they would be breaking, but they might be in breach of secondary legislation. It seems the Constitution clearly states people have the right to withdraw labour, associate and use these rights as it suits them. The House should be aware that police officers in many European countries are members of trade unions or similar associations. One may consider it is a given that gardaí should not strike, but that is not the same as saying they do not have a constitutional right to strike. I do not know whether a specific prohibition is provided for in law, but it may be provided for in regulations. I question whether people can simply decide gardaí will be in breach of the law if they engage in industrial action. Therefore, certain constitutional issues need to be addressed.
It seems every person, including members of the Garda, has the right to withdraw his or her labour. The exercise of this right is guaranteed by the Constitution. I would like to debate this point with the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who has commented on the issue. I am not talking about whether gardaí might go on strike in the current circumstances, as that is not the issue for me. I am talking about a much broader issue. People are reinforcing the view that gardaí cannot strike without breaking the law. Everybody has a constitutional right to withdraw his or her labour as he or she sees fit. I would like the matter to be discussed and to hear more about it.
Sockpuppetry on the CLR. December 10, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.13 comments
I’ve said I’m not happy with the way the tone of some of the debate on CLR is going, and myself and Garibaldy will say more about this later. But today we saw people more sinned against than sinning. Amongst the calls for a long-time friend of CLR to quit commenting here, and the usual ri-ra, a particularly unpleasant example of sockpuppetry manifested itself. A word of caution to those who engage in that sort of deception. All IP addresses and emails are logged by WordPress. We will take action to ban anyone who uses a sockpuppet to indulge in personal attacks on other commenters, and consider passing that data on to the victim if they want to take things further. I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
Social Justice Ireland Response to the Budget December 10, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Irish Politics.add a comment
Social Justice Ireland has produced an extremely interesting and detailed 20 page response to the Budget. It is well worth reading, laying out as it does an alternative approach designed to protect those on lower incomes, and pointing out that the Government withheld much of the supplementary data usually released with the Budget this year. Definitely an analysis that those of us on the left should be reading.
It’s a Question of Class December 10, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Irish Politics, The Left.31 comments
The budget. Let’s cut to the chase here. It’s not a question of whether the people in the public or the private sector are suffering most. There is one sector that is suffering most – the working class.
The most privileged sectors of our society have been protected by a government that has truly proven itself to be the management committee of the bourgeoisie. The bankers and the property speculators have been cushioned through the trauma that their reckless speculation and hostility to regulation and social solidarity helped create. The political, legal, academic and media classes have stepped forward willingly to play their role as the ideological and political defenders of capitalist society. They are determined to prove Lenin right once again, that there is no crisis of capitalism that the workers cannot be made to pay for.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of workers and their families are suffering through job losses, wage cuts, and the rest. The attacks on social spending are aimed at those sectors of the working class that can least afford it. As pointed out by Alastair on another thread, the next stage in this agenda in following budgets will be further attacks on already often inadequate public services – health, education, and other forms of social welfare will be scaled back, most likely savaged, in line with a vicious and anti-people ideology. At the same time, workers will be forced to try and pick up the pieces through the private sector on a reduced income while private companies make more profit. The whole thing is brilliant in its cynicism and cruelty.
We on the left have already allowed ourselves to get sidetracked too far into the public/private sector debate. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is the absence of a significant political party dedicated to raising class politics consistently and clearly, with the power to make its voice heard above the din of the right-wing media through the Dáil, direct action, and in its own publications.
Without such a party, the leadership of opposition has fallen to the trade unions. As those of us on the further left know, there must be limits to what we can expect of trade unionists, especially ones who have grown up within a social partnership model. The unions have provided some effective opposition, but at the same time, their political instincts are automatically towards compromise, and this will always be the case. The fact that the unions are providing the main opposition has made the task of the right easier, in protraying the slash and burn agenda as an attack on a form of labour aristocracy.
There can be only one answer. The public sector has the potential to be an immensely liberating agent in society – a quality healthcare system, free education, public housing, state companies and the rest can transform the lives of an entire people, as we saw in the last century. We must oppose the cuts. Not in the interest of public sector workers, but in the name of the name of the entire working class. There has never been a time where unambiguous class politics has been needed more.
My favourite part? December 10, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.35 comments
Well, it came a bit before the Budget, indeed it came on Tuesday. The bit where:
Mr Lenihan conceded last night that the budget would be very difficult but he forecast that, “it is going to be the last of the very difficult budgets”.
Some of you may have noticed that on matters economic Pat McArdle and I don’t see eye to eye… well, I don’t see him… he’s never seen me… or heard of me either come to think of it…
But where I do agree with Pat McArdle 100% is his thought that this is only the beginning of a process. This the ‘last of the very difficult budgets’? Not even close Minister. Not even close.
Actually my second favourite part was when Lenihan during the speech called the income levy ‘highly progressive’… you’d wonder does he understand the technical term as used in reference to taxes either… because it’s anything but.
And of all else, how come Richard Curran of the Sunday Business Post is the only one on RTÉ panel yesterday afternoon directly after the Budget speech, to actually seem to have an intuitive grasp of why all the talk about welfare and other rates going back to 2006 levels as if that were ‘easy’ was pointless since, as he noted, people had adjusted to 2008-9 rates in the meantime and such an ‘readjustment’ would incur real pain.
As it happens last night I went out for pints, first time in weeks, with a bunch of friends from national school. So, apologies if this is thin. I arrived home in time to watch Prime Time and Lenihan and Richard Bruton (who I once recall addressing a hall in Finglas in the 1980s to an – ahem – not so friendly crowd filled with us WP types, kudos to Bruton, in fairness even if I didn’t agree with him in the slightest) shout at each other. I’d love to know about the 20%, 30% wage cuts in the private sector Brian Lenihan was talking about. I have no doubt that in scattered individual case, sole traders and the like, and they have my sympathy, that has happened, but systemically? Hmmmm….
As for the guy from KPMG making the ‘comparisons’ between public and private sector workers to see how the Budget affected it… well, he couldn’t refrain from trying to drag in the pension premium (did he even listen to Lenihan’s words on the public service pensions? Apparently not), and other intangibles, i.e. people with jobs as against those who don’t… well, yes, but we could compare living people with dead, but it’s not a hugely useful way of looking at this… but he had to accept that PS workers had taken significant hits…very significant hits.
And Richard Curran, reprise, was saying that emigration was going to take place and while sympathetic seemed unable to offer options. I mean, is this how low we’ve gone as a society, that somehow seeing the export of our young is now an acceptable option? We’ve been degraded as a people and as a society. And that’s the reality of the bottom line analyses we’ve seen over the past while.
Anyhow, perhaps now the sniping at the Public Sector will end. All that can be said is that we’re looking at a society where the last twelve to eighteen months have seen, for my money, a catastrophic approach where the name of the game has been to talk about social solidarity and then to pit different sectors of the economy against each other. As someone who remains effectively outside the public sector I fear that we’ll all repent at leisure for that days work.
