Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week May 2, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in media.trackback
Not as bumper a crop as expected this week, but still a good deal of hysteria over the GRA (especially from Eilis O’Hanlon), and a continued schizoid attitude towards Brian Lenihan, where one week he is leader and hero, and the next week he is abject and villain. He’s a hero this week amid a flurry of deunciation of Cowen. Anyway.
In third place, John Drennan reminds us it’s still all the public sector workers’ fault. This week it’s not passport office staff, but the Guards and the HSE staff.
Last week, outside of the excruciating pension debacle, we had the petulant decision by our Minister for Justice to flounce away from a Garda Representative Association conference instead of taking on the growing evolution of the force into an independent militia.
And that’s before we get to the spectacle of our bankrupt Exchequer having to borrow €500m to bail out the equally bankrupt Greeks and the sight of a government bending the knee to a militant group of Health Service Executive workers whose sense of public service resembles Robert Mugabe’s Zanu party.
In second place, Brendan O’Connor. He condemns those angry at the actions of government as mobs, reminding us how the bourgeoisie views the working class.
The chaos at executive level, where Government ministers and former ministers and TDs engaged in an unseemly dogfight, bled down, as usual, to a chaos among the people, as the latest mob formed.
Next week, it will be something else. None of these dogfights or mobs will create a single job or do a thing for our ailing economy.
They will simply distract people and allow people to vent some more pointless — if understandable — anger at politicians and anyone else who gets caught in the firing line. None of these dogfights leads us forward; at best they lead us in circles.
They certainly don’t galvanise the country or make anything seem better.
Because the politicians and the bankers and the experts are making things so much better. Had there been more angry over corruption and the links between the financial class, property speculators, and politicians, we mightn’t have ended up in this state.
In first place, I was going to go with Harris’ praise for Jack O’Connor’s speech defending the Croke park deal, but this quote is funnier. And definitely sillier.
Many of the gardai on the news are grossly fat. Ahern should punish them properly. He should put them on a diet.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Did you not get a sense of hysteria and fear in this week’s edition, particularly in light of the fact that the majority supported what the Gardai had to say in their very own poll?
You’re right, Eilis O’Hanlon’s article was particularly mind bending. Predictably, Jody Corcoran threw his weight in. It does not seem he had read the speech, and the same goes for the editorial.
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I did get that sense yobbah, yeah. The problem is that so superheated is the average Sindo coumnist’s style that it can be hard to distinguish between hyperbole and hysteria. I seriously doubt Drennan believes the Gardaí are on the verge of becoming an independent militia, but I do think some of them do probably harbour fears as to what might happen if there are large demonstrations in an angrier climate should things end up like Greece.
I doubt there was much close reading of the speech as well.
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I think that the Guards are publicly identifying (however tenuously) with the anger among the PAYE workers at the current state of affairs probably causes the elite that runs this country more nightmares than everything else put together.
After all, who will go in and crack the skulls of the hoi polloi to maintain the Natural Order Of Things? PDFORRA are making the same noises, so they can’t use the military either…
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Reading our Irish friend in Greece Damomac I was struck by how poorly regarded the Greek police are. Not sure the Gardai have the same status. But the Gardai remind me a bit of [some of the] teachers in terms of being semi-detached from workers generally. Granted the anger is a new phenomenon and I was saying last week I’ve talked to Gardai in middle ranks who are very irate about the speeches thinking that it crosses a line. Of course the other way of looking at this is that if it were a left government would one want a politicised speech on – say – crime and punishment that ran counter to the govt policy? Which I suspect puts me close enough to Jim Monaghans position.
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Granted the anger is a new phenomenon and I was saying last week I’ve talked to Gardai in middle ranks who are very irate about the speeches thinking that it crosses a line
I find myself that the further up the ranks one goes, aversion to militancy (and satisfaction with the pay cuts) increases, for obvious reasons (and reactions in my own workplace to the Guards’ undelivered speech was along these lines also). And promotions in the Guards are even more dependent on political favour than other parts of the public sector.
Of course the other way of looking at this is that if it were a left government would one want a politicised speech on – say – crime and punishment that ran counter to the govt policy?
I’d say that such would be supported by the same Dermot Ahern and his FF colleagues, no matter what they’re saying today. Take your breaks where you get them, is my opinion on the whole thing – for once, the Guards are on the side of the angels.
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Yeah, I’m with EWI. How I respond to a reactionary strike-wave in Chile or Bolivia doesn’t impact on my response to a progressive strike-wave elsewhere. Same with the Guards. If an institution designed to uphold an unjust political and economic system is reacting against that injustice, it’s win-win as far as I’m concerned.
The task for the left is to make them connect their struggle with the broader struggle, not to write them off as mé féiners.
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I don’t have a hard and fast rule on this, nor would I dismiss those in the GRA as being me féiners, and you’re both right that links with progressives should be made at all times… and I agree that in terms of the overall mood music this is good. But just that in the long run we’ll see where we’re at.
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(This, by the way, was a very interesting letter on the GRA the other day in the IT: http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/index.html#1224269474887)
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Given the interest in the Red C poll, I wonder what we should make of the ‘other poll’: the sales figures for the Sindo versus the sales figures for the others. Different, I know, in that there is no left-leaning Sunday Irish newspaper, but I’m curious as to what the sales figures might or might not tell us.
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V. good question. To be honest I find the Business Post the least hectoring of all the papers when it comes to matters left/right or in relation to the public sector. It’s really a matter of tone, but I think it retains a much more civilised one. Which is a small thing, but not insignificant.
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So, the Public Sector Union tanks rolling into D4 will be accompanied by Garda storm troopers (no doubt armed with books of speeding tickets)? Golly.
As to the sudden interest of various FF politicians, shills and hangers-on telling us about the pointless negativity of anger etc. in the past week or so, I smell a fat check from FF to whatever PR firm that thought this stuff up.
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But the Gardai remind me a bit of [some of the] teachers in terms of being semi-detached from workers generally.
That might be changing a bit – I’ve met quite a few cops recently who are a) from Dublin and who b) seem to grasp the wider issues behind what older members of the force might see in more black and white terms. Maybe unfortunately, the Gardai haven’t had to face the rigorous examination of its attitudes and prejudices that the Met went through after Stephen Lawrence et al, or the PSNI has, and has never had to reconstitute itself and discard its old habits.
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Makes sense. Mind you the esprit de corps inside the Gardai has to be seen to be believed. Very much, and understandably given much of what comes their way and what they’re asked to do, see themselves as a group apart.
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Not the usual kind of stupidity, but Corcoran’s piece on Gerry Ryan was a marvel of self-aggrandisement, prurience and innuendo. Apparently loneliness killed Gerry – and jody knows because he’s been there. He pictures gerry arriving home ‘in whatever state’ (nudge, nudge) to a cold apartment and remembers the breakup of his own marriage. Every article in the Sindo, really, is about its author rather than its ostensible subject: Barry Egan is equally good value, the clear implication of his ‘tribute’ being that he and Gerry were two amigos, witty, irreverent, and sweeping away the old Ireland with their wit and outrageousness. Yeah, right – I’m sure Gerry Ryan is resting happy in the knowledge that he made the country safe for the Sindo’s boorishness and vulgarity.
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