It’s all laughter and smiles down at the Irish Times… September 20, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.10 comments
I know I shouldn’t but… Noel Whelan is unhappy with Sarah Carey.
It is simply inaccurate to say, as Sarah Carey did on this page on Thursday, that I suggested that RTÉ should not have broadcast the content of Simon Coveney’s tweet until they got a response from the Fianna Fáil press office to their query on whether the Taoiseach was “unwell”. The second half of her article was premised on this inaccuracy. The new rule of political coverage for which she and others appear to argue is that the requirements of accuracy should not get in the way of the need for pace and drama.
What I did say and reiterate here is that RTÉ itself should have checked whether the allegation in the text that the Taoiseach was drunk had any basis in fact before parroting it on the airwaves. RTÉ had at least five staff on site in Galway, including the presenter and producer of Morning Ireland itself. Any or all of these could quickly have put together a full picture of the extent of the Taoiseach’s partying the night before and more importantly what physical condition he presented during the interview.
….
Importantly, when given an opportunity to do so later in the day, RTÉ’s senior correspondent on the ground, David Davin Power, was unequivocal on the central point. The Taoiseach, he said, did not when he last saw him late the previous night appear to be “impaired” in any way and there was no evidence to suggest he was hung-over or drunk during the interview.
And what did Sarah Carey say?
And so we come to that tweet, the germ of a hundred columns and radio items on social media. That would have been predictable enough, but I’m afraid Noel Whelan’s arguments on Today with Pat Kenny on Radio 1 yesterday dug the hole deeper.
He’d moved on from blaming Coveney and Twitter to blaming RTÉ. Apparently the real crime was not that Coveney would dare to tweet what everyone else was thinking, but that RTÉ would let us know. Whelan was unusually shrill and genuinely furious that Pat Kenny had broadcast the accusation. He argued it was the responsibility of the mainstream media to check its facts rather than channelling unconfirmed rubbish from the interweb.
When Kenny said they had formally asked the Fianna Fáil press office whether the Taoiseach was “unwell” but received no response, Whelan said they should have waited for one. Hello Pravda .
While there is a lot of garbage on Twitter, there were undeniable facts. Simon Coveney did make the public statement. He described the Taoiseach’s condition in precisely the terms that many other people did without requiring a political analyst to tell them what they’d heard. Several journalists confirmed the fact that the Taoiseach was in the bar until after 3am, and was seen drinking pints. Radio stations were inundated with complaints about the Taoiseach’s interview before Coveney’s tweet was reported.
Whelan’s attack on RTÉ for broadcasting the blindingly obvious without getting permission from the Fianna Fáil press office was way off the mark. It took a slightly incredulous Fintan O’Toole to remind him that the Government has spent two years in green jersey mode, warning us all to behave in front of the international press.
By the way, what about this? Loyalty in such unexpected places these days...
Still, it might explain why there’s been so much hesitation to do anything in FF. Can’t move forward, can’t move back.
Left Archive: The Downing Street Declaration ‘New Unionism and the Communities of Resistance – A Republican Worker Tendency pamphlet, 1994. September 20, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Republican Worker Tendency.15 comments
This is a group for which there is relatively little information available. This leaflet issued in the name of the Republican Worker Tendency is dated 26/4/1994. The only mentions of the RWT on the internet is a group which under the Revolutionary Democratic Group left the UK SWP. It later changed its name to the RWT after an internal cleavage and focused on Edinburgh embracing ‘left nationalism’. It appears to have been active in the late 1990s and even more recently (worth mentioning thatthere was also a Republican Workers’ Tendency associated with the Socialist Labour Party in the late 1970s in Ireland). Certainly the overall thesis of the leaflet and the address on the back cover indicates that it is indeed from the Edinburgh formation, and any more information would be very welcome.
The document posits that the Downing Street Declaration is part of a continuing process by the British government to prevent the break-up of the United Kingdom and that part of this is to rebuild the Unionist state. This they regard as having the potential to generate linkages with loyalists, whose only choice in a context where London and Dublin are working together is to ‘go … it alone with a fascist, further slimmed down, ‘ethnically’ exclusive ‘Ulster’ for Protestants only.
It argues that due to the ‘prominent role played by British and Irish C.P. members in the formation of the Officials… the early Provisionals had quite a Right populist programme’. However it also argues that a mid period saw the ‘C.P.’s theory of national liberation [win] a new convert … when SF backed the ‘stalinist’ Polish government against Soildarnosc’. And eventually it argues that ‘since the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the stage of ‘socialism’ has been dropped, even on paper, by all those adhering to ‘popular front’ politics.
It is cynical about the prospect for armed struggle, except when ‘the revolutionary potential of the national question… is linked with social demands’. And… ‘the alternative of retreating solely to the early Provisional strategy of the ‘bomb’ and the bullet’, will most likely lead to the same defeats as before.
It is equally cycnical about the “Brit left”, whether of Labour, or further left, variety. Indeed it has harsh words for those ‘groups [which] offer “unconditional support” for the Republican Movement. The Revolutionary Communist Group and the C.P.G.B. – Marxist-Leninist are the best examples’. And tellingly it continues ‘Their focusing on the Republican leadership rather than the wider republican ‘communities of resistance’ is a product of the marginalisation of the ‘Brit left’.
It also references ‘the counter-revolutionary role of the ‘Brit Left’s Irish supporters’ who it sees as outriders for British Unionism.
‘The role the S.W.M. is playing over Ireland mirrors the S.W.P. role ‘on the mainland’. Here they have become ‘outriders for the trade union leaders and Labour Party, trying to ’round up’ and return to the fold, any workers who are contemplating independent action’.
All this leads the RWT to argue that ‘this [is] an opportunity to unite the working class of all the constituent nations from below. If the working class does not take the lead in the break-up of the U.K. state, others will. The consequences of leaving to nationalists to take the lead in the break-up of bureaucratic multi-nation states can be seen in the ex-U.S.S.R. and ex-Yugoslavia.’
A box at the end notes that the political programme of the RWT is available. If anyone has one and could send a copy to the Archive it would be very much appreciated.
Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week (sort of)… September 19, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.8 comments
Garibaldy is unable to do the weekly piece this week, so rather than stepping into shoes I cannot fill and providing his customary forensic overview of the Sunday Independent perhaps some of you could offer up the most… ahem… ‘striking’ pieces from that newspaper this weekend…
However, I will offer this up, from Senator Harris, and wonder – not for the first time, how he was ever a member of the same political party that I and many others were (actually let me spread the net more widely, the same broad ideological movement, whatever about the distinctions between formations)…
Second, hard words. Cowen does not seem willing to act against abusers of the public purse because of his beloved “due process”. So before he lets Brian Lenihan loose on the welfare class, the least he might do is go on television and radio and give a good tongue lashing to any fat-cat group which is gorging on the public purse.
Brian Cowen in the Mail… September 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Irish Politics, Uncategorized.21 comments
…an interesting piece in today’s Mail about Brian Cowen. It’s written from a reasonably sympathetic viewpoint by Jason O’Toole and there’s some useful pieces of information in the mix… consider the following:
Taoiseach,’ I politely began, while we waited for the kettle to boil, as he buttered some crackers and sliced big chunks of cheddar for both of us to munch on, ‘do you know that there’s a rumour going around that you’re a heavy drinker?’ As we stood there in his modestly arranged family kitchen back in the summer of 2008, as I conducted a series of interviews with him for a biography I was writing about him, I’m sure I saw – if only for a split second – a genuine look of horror in Brian Cowen’s eyes. Immediately, I was left with the distinct impression that our then newly-appointed Taoiseach was flabbergasted that he was being described as, to be brutally honest, a lush.
Cowen is quoted as saying he almost never drinks around the house… although…
He admitted that he ‘would always go in’ to a pub ‘for a couple’ of pints ‘on my way home from a meeting’. He did so, he said, to unwind. ‘It is good to talk about other things and not to have your life dominated by politics. It takes up enough of our time as it is. You sit down with friends and relax and talk about everything – except politics. ‘I enjoy the craic and other things, local issues, local chat, sport. It’s part of what you do to deal with the heavy workload that you have. Different people have different ways of relaxing. But I don’t exclusively relax that way.’
And what of this?
And, of course, there was his infamous admission that ‘unlike Bill Clinton I did inhale’ marijuana. It was a quote, interestingly enough, that he’d concluded by stressing that he ‘certainly got more enjoyment out of a few pints’.
Or this…
Cowen has made no secret of the fact that he likes his pints. He can often be found in Digan’s pub, which directly faces the solicitors’ firm he helped establish before being appointed to the cabinet. Here you can find him having a few pints, enjoying a sneaky smoke and the occasional flutter on the horses; when he’d normally get one of the regular revellers to place a modest €5 or €10 bet for him in the nearby bookies. Digan’s also happens to face Mac’s Cabs, whom he’ll use to drop home to his house down the road. But it’s not the only pub in Tullamore he frequents and he will usually name different venues when asked for his favourite local haunt.
And, what of this?
He once told me that he initially picked Doheny and Nesbitts pub as a regular haunt in Dublin because, apart from being it being in such close proximity to the Dáil, its proprietor also just happens to be from his own constituency. And when he’s up in Dublin, Cowen now prefers to drink in the Dáil Bar because it is ‘the only private bar in the country that you can go into as a members’ bar’ without having any unwanted ‘exposure’. It would be hard to imagine him being able to enjoy a quiet pint in Dublin these days, as undoubtedly somebody would vent their anger at him. But it also appears that he might be starting to detect an occasional edge to the atmosphere in some of the local pubs in his home town. One source told me that in recent times, in one or two venues in Tullamore, the occasional drunken reveller can be heard muttering some snide comments under their breath about the economy when Cowen passes by them on his way to the bar for his tipple. If true, it is surely is a sign that the popularity of Tullamore’s most famous adopted son is not only declining nationally but also locally.
At the very least it sounds like the talk of a fairly hard-drinking culture at the top of FF is far from a caricature.
Two years ago, Cowen told me: ‘Thankfully, I don’t have many enemies – if any. I don’t think I have any enemies, actually. Maybe some would think ill of me,’ he paused to laugh, before adding, ‘but I don’t have any enemies.’ Today he probably believes that he has many enemies – not only in the opposition and in the media, but within his own shaky coalition government. But he is always sanguine about the attacks from the opposition. ‘I’m not bothered,’ he shrugged, adding, ‘Enda’s scriptwriters basically have the philosophy of playing the man and not the ball. They basically don’t know where the ball is! I think what’s wrong there – and this is the people that are writing for him – they are very disappointed that they didn’t win the last election and they are still transfixed with that angle of “Oh, he bought the election!” ‘They had policies, which you covered very well in one of your articles, Jason, that was far more generous than me on what they were going to spend! But he doesn’t accuse himself of trying to buy the election.’
In a way what’s most interesting is that O’Toole doesn’t hesitate to say the following:
Sadly for him, it’s hard to envisage Cowen managing to win a second term in office. His tenure as Taoiseach will probably be remembered for some amazingly daft errors – such as the medical card debacle – that one would expect from a neophyte politician. Perhaps, none more so than going live on air with less than five hours of sleep after a night of excessive drinking. Unfortunately, he has nobody to blame but himself.
And also the following:
‘There are times when you should have been a bit bigger about things – that will happen – but you’ve got to be honest with yourself in those situations. Acknowledge it when it happens.’ [says Brian Cowen]. Perhaps that would have been a much better comment for him to have made about the radio debacle, rather than relying on the ‘hoarse’ excuse that many cynics believe sounds just as plausible as Bertie Ahern’s defence of how he’d won it all at the races.
Greek CP statement on the current and forthcoming “austerity measures” September 18, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in Communism, International Politics.2 comments
I picked this up off the revamped, and now rather snazzy, Solidnet. The Greek CP has issued a statement outlining the current plans for further anti-people measures.
All the measures that have already passed and the forthcoming barbarous measures of the “updated memorandum”
The updated memorandum promoted in Greece by the Pasok government, IMF, EU and Greek plutocracy includes new anti-people measures with the aim to reduce further the price of the labour power:
Working relations
§ Law that provides that firm-level agreements will prevail over sectoral agreements.
§ Law that enables enterprises which are not members of the employers’ unions that sign the collective labour agreement not to implement it. Till now they were obliged to implement it after its validation by the Ministry of Labour.
§ Regulation that adapts the arbitration system for the signing of collective labour agreements to the demands of the capitalists as it specifies that the function of arbitration “should serve competitiveness on the basis of labour cost and job creation”.
§ The abolition of any restrictions on the time of part-time work and temporary contracts provided by law 3846/2010 passed by the government last May.
§ The extension on the so-called probationary period for new jobs to one year (two months until nowadays). During that period employers can dismiss without any warning and without paying any dismissal pay.
§ The implementation of the Bolkenstein Directive providing the elimination of the restriction of the minimum wage in order to boost investments.
§ Drastic cuts on the already low unemployment benefits aiming at savings of 500 million EUR.
This weekend I’ll be listening to…The Night That the Lights Went Out in Georgia…amongst others… September 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....19 comments
Another musical guest post from YourCousin… for which many thanks…
…I mean the original version, not the crappy nineties remake by Reba. There’s a certain guilty pleasure about early seventies country, especially the semi-cheesy stuff and one hit wonders.
Now admittedly Loretta isn’t a one hit wonder and even the others in this post had other hits, but if most people knew them at all it would be for these songs.
Area nearby visited by foreign dignitary. Let’s everyone get offended. Really offended. September 17, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.13 comments
I’ll add to the earlier thoughts. There’s an awful lot of rather foolish rhetoric being thrown around about the Pope’s visit to the UK. Indeed it’s astounding stuff really just how much time is being devoted to all this in the media. I’m, as it happens, one of those who would probably be more rather than less sympathetic to the man.
But to read some of the stuff that’s being put out what is really a fairly mundane visit that should in all truth be of little enough interest to any beyond Catholicism is being leveraged into something close enough to an existential event. On the other hand we have the absurdity of some complaining that the Pope is barely off the plane before he critiques secularism. Well, yes, but that’s sort of what a Pope does and to complain seems to miss the point.
Reality is that in a short period of time he will have gone, and all will resume its usual course. There’s little doubt that his visit will have given something of a fillip to Catholics, but it’s not as if this is going to manifest itself publicly. The Catholic Church in the UK has never struck me as particularly cowed and nor should it be – but claims to the contrary seem a bit odd, to put it mildly. Indeed given the class structure of the Church few enough would find the image of the Pope and the Queen together as particularly striking (or disturbing). This is after all a woman who has been surrounded by the remarkably tenacious remnants of the Catholic ancien regime for all her life and I’m hardly the first, or the millionth to find the class disparities in English Catholicism as fascinating.
Actually what is of more interest is how this may feed into a future visit by the Queen to these shores. Perhaps I’m a terrible cynic, but I can’t help feeling that another piece of the jigsaw has moved into place. Not, that I’m suggesting for a moment that the Vatican would shift its own direction one way or another to aid the monarch. But… well, more on that soon.
This week on the Irish Election Literature Blog… September 17, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.add a comment
…thanks as ever to AK for a very intriguing round-up, which fits the week that’s in it, or as he says ‘A strange week with all the Cowen hangover carry on.’…
From the 2005 UK Election, The Socialist Envoronmental Alliance Manifesto for Eamon McCann
From the 2004 Local Elections, Kevin Wingfield running for the SWP in Ballymun
Not a million miles away but from 3 years later is the Finglas People a newsletter of the Irish Socialist Network.
Another from the Irish Socialist Network is a March 2006 edition of LEFTLINE
Then a clever Sinn Féin Anti Water Charges Leaflet
Another Hospital looking to be saved is St Luke’s Cancer Hospital
and finally watch out you Paediatrician Rappers.
Area man writes in his weekly newspaper column about how the media are misrepresenting Papal message during visit to foreign country… September 17, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.107 comments
…Protest…too much… he does…methinks….
Erm… not least because the Pope himself hasn’t been afraid to tackle some of these issues himself, as reported here…… or here and… what of this sympathetic piece in the… er… Guardian… or… ach, why do I bother?
Report by Cuba on the UN General Assembly Resolution 64/6 on the Necessity to End the US Embargo September 16, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in Cuba.36 comments
Click here to read the report, dating from July 2010.
