Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week July 24, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
Some people might think that getting up on a Sunday morning, switching on the computer, and subjecting yourself in minute detail to the delights of the Sunday Independent might be a bit of a drag. However, those people are forgetting that the Sunday Independent has been a fearless beacon of modern pluralism, a shining light against atavistic nationalism, and leader in the struggle to free ourselves from the nightmare of Irish history and creating a new future not dictated by past prejudices. That’s why it’s such a delight to read such lines as the following from Daniel McConnell, which point to the Sindo’s commitment to a bright new future.
Welcome to the world of German imperialism, economic style. The Germans have always wanted to control the economies of Europe and now, after this deal, they will. Is it democratic? No. Is it reality? Yes.
Actually, typing this, I think I’ve typed something very similar before when someone in the Sindo came out with the same Germanophobic rubbish that is more reminiscent of British nationalism than it is of constructing a pluralist Irish identity (and just to prove the point, Frederick Forsyth appears saying the deal is a charter for a fourth reich). But if the Sindo writers can get away with repeating the same nonsense week after week, I figure I can do the same thing. This is not the only place in this week’s edition where similar sort of stuff can be seen. Could it be that, for all their rhetoric, the denizens of the Sindo are nothing but narrow-minded, petit-bourgeois nationalists after all, albeit of the 26 county variety? One might suggest that that conforms with their general right-wing attitudes – reading this piece by Emer O’Kelly brings up old Ireland, and conservative religious Europe.
Eoghan Harris, at least, is continuing in a vein more in keeping with the Sindo’s self-image, praising Kenny’s recent speech on clerical abuse to the rafters.
Kenny’s revolutionary speech was not simply a rebuke to the Vatican. It called for reform of the Roman Catholic Church, confirmed that Home Rule did not mean Rome rule, and returned the word “republic” to the Northern Protestants to whom it originally belonged. Like all great speeches it had good authority, slew a sacred cow, and spoke the truths that set us free.
Personally, I don’t share the idea that the speech was some sort of revolutionary act marking a fundamental break with Rome or an act of massive political and moral courage. It probably would have been 25 years ago, but after Bishop Casey, the child abuse and Magdalene laundries, the decline in church attendance, the growth of secularisation, immigration and all the other changes of the last couple of decades, to me it seemed like an easy target guaranteed to be popular, but at the same time sparing the local church by focusing on Rome. In other words, a piece of empty populism. That isn’t, however, the reason I’m nominating this statement. It’s the bit about returning the word “republic” to the Northern Protestants to whom it originally belonged. I don’t even know where to start with that. By the by, there’s been an interesting shift in the rhetoric surrounding the IRA and sectarianism during the 1919-23 period. It used to be that the only people who opposed the line advocated by Harris and co on the basis of Peter Hart’s work were dismissed as cranks and nutters, not serious historians. Now, with the hostile reaction in reviews written by historians to that book on Cork disappearances, the rhetoric has shifted to condemn at least some academic historians for partaking of a cover-up akin to that undertaken by the Catholic church.
This week’s winner, in a tough week to shine, is Brendan O’Connor who seems incapable of defining what the public sector actually is, but he doesn’t like it when he sees it.
So the public sector is sorted. Its workers will maintain the 47 per cent premium they enjoy over their colleagues in the private sector, and they have total job security. So however horrific the upcoming budget, they can all rest easy. The public sector will not be downsized unless it wants to be. So while we cut services to the old, the sick and the disabled; while we compromise our education system, the major thing we should be investing in now in order to capitalise on the next boom; while the Government has taken to stealing people’s pensions in order to balance the books, the public sector has been ring-fenced.
Apparently public services to the old, the sick and the disabled, as well as the education system, are not part of the public sector. Who knew?
Most idiotic statement in the Sindo ever?
[...] [...]
‘Most idiotic statement in the Sindo ever?’
Yes.
Followed not far behind by this magical 47% ‘premium’ paid to public sector workers. Where did he get this from, not least given that Harris’ is always complaining about a 35% gap between the two sectors.
There’s still Coleman’s stupid statement of the year winner from last year, which said that the main reason the economy was wrecked was because there was an obsession in academia with producing only phds. I think that just shades this.
As for figures, there were figures in one of the stories saying something along the lines that social welfare was a third of the budget. 25% was for the dole it said, then it gave a figure of 22% or sthereabouts for something else. I didn’t even bother trying to work out what was going on there.
Could it be that, for all their rhetoric, the denizens of the Sindo are nothing but narrow-minded, petit-bourgeois nationalists after all, albeit of the 26 county variety?
Say rather that they’re ‘nationalists’ of the Redmond variety, who are eager to lick up to what they perceive as their betters in London and the British Establishment, and (in Redmond’s day with the Empire and today with NATO) anxious to partake of kicking brown-skinned peoples around to show who’s top of the pile.
As you say, their decrying of proper Irish nationalism/republicanism stands in stark contrast to their embrace of Little Englander attitudes (right down to often inadvertently using ‘we’ to describe the UK). It’s the standard schtick of Bruton, Myers, Dudley-Edwards et al.
‘it seemed like an easy target guaranteed to be popular, but at the same time sparing the local church by focusing on Rome.’
-Exactly.
If Kenny is serious in his attack on those he rightly describes as the rapers and torturers of children why does his government continue to entrust the education of children to them in Ireland’s primary schools?
Back in the 1970s, the veto power of Parish Priests over the running of primary schools was diluted to include input from boards of lay people. So it’s not quite accurate to say that the education of primary school children is entrusted to ‘the rapers and torturers of children’.
But I take your point that it would be better if Enda’s speech was backed up with action (for which I am not holding my breath).
“At present almost 90 per cent of primary schools are under the patronage of the Catholic Church. It is also involved in the patronage of about 400 of the 700 second-level schools.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0628/1224299679835.html
I’m not disputing that, I’m saying the situation is slightly more complex than we might assume.
The roles of these boards is in effect very little. Organising fund raising events
“The roles of these boards is in effect very little. Organising fund raising events”
Often, those are farmed out to the parents’ council, and that is a story inits own right.
The Board of Management (BoM) of a school is the legal entity which is the employer, responsible for health and safety, etc., and I would say their primary purpose is to protect the Department of Education. In case after case, the Department has successfully argued beforethe courts “it wasn’t us, it was the BoM that did it”, and never once has the Department’s failure to ensure that the members of BoMs are properly trained — or even briefed — been brought up.
while the Government has taken to stealing people’s pensions in order to balance the books, the public sector has been ring-fenced.
Liar. I know a number of people who can no longer even afford to get VHI because of cuts in their pay. Some ‘ring-fencing’ there.
Taxing our billionaire exiles like Tony O’Reilly can’t come soon enough.
” It’s the bit about returning the word “republic” to the Northern Protestants to whom it originally belonged. I don’t even know where to start with that. ”
Is he refering to Cromwells Republican army and the development of the United Irishmen as suggested in Fergus Whelans book ?
What was the premise of the Fergus Whelan book?
Hal,
My understanding was that he was referring to the Church of Ireland and Presbyterian leaders of the United Irishmen, based mainly in Belfast. There were a number of reasons I said I didn’t know where to start. Firstly, the people to whom he is referring specifically set out the republic as a secular idea for all Irish people, and specifically fought the idea that it belonged to one religious tradition or another. There’s also the bigger question of the implicit suggestion that republicanism popped up out of nowhere among a bunch of northern Protestants in the 1790s.
EWI,
To really vulgarise the argument, I think Fergus Whelan was arguing that the roots of republicanism in Ireland lay in the tradition created by republican dissenters around the time of Cromwell, and that the extent to which this is true has been overlooked before.
Doesn’t really make sense. It’s (maybe a bit witty) but unhistorical.
Of course, the Ulster presbyterians punched above their weight for the 1798 rebellion, but Cromwell was really just a sociopathic British general trying to subdue Ireland. The American and French revolutions introduced republicanism to Ireland.
I don’t think Cromwell was being credited,maybe some of his soldiers/planters.
The problem is that ‘Cromwell’ himself was much less radical than others (plus, there was that whole blind genocidal rage towards the Catholic Irish thing he had going).
I’m wondering…Has Whelan, or any other historian, found links between the likes of the Levellers or Diggers in Britain and later Irish political movments?
Sick of people like O Connor who are barely literate talking crap.Here’s a guy who gets paid for a TV show by the taxpayer,does advertisements for corner shops and writes articles for the Sindo,how many pay cheques does he get?
Soon O Connor and his ilk will be complaing of excessive taxation to pay for greedy public servants and welfare recipients and not to bail out the speculators and the banks
Good blog this week Garibaldy.
Thanks D_D
+1 D_D
Hard to say, Garibaldy, if O’Connor’s contribution is the most idiotic ever – you’ve pulled out some gems in the past. Clearly, though, it encapsulates the general idiocy that the Sindo specialises in. However, let’s have a little balance – which comes via the Sindo’s Business Editor, Nick Webb, who states: ‘we still need something to kick-start the economy. You can’t grow by cutting. And we can’t get out of the debt crisis without growing the economy. We need our own Marshall Plan, part- funded by the €800m savings in the bailout interest rate, to stimulate growth again unless we want to face a “lost decade” of joblessness and zero opportunities.’
Webb goes on to propose ’10 smart ways to stimulate the economy’. I wouldn’t agree with all of them, but at least it is an attempt to outline an expansionary, rather than a deflationary, programme. What’s more, it avoids the type of idiocy that O’Connor presents.
Ever the optimist, I’d like to think this is the beginning of a new trend of commentary in the Sindo. However, I suspect there will still be sufficient more than sufficient to fill your regular post for a long time to come.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ten-smart-ways-to-stimulate-the-economy-2829897.html
Going through Webb’s 10 ideas:
- PPP’s. Err, no. PPP’s are a scam, daylight robbery on the public purse.
- Car scrappage has “worked well”. I’m sure it has indeed, for one Bill Cullen.
- No corporate tax for the first three years? Reduced corporate taxes all around?
- Paying public sector workers in vouchers for luxury goods?
- Spirit of Ireland? Really?
- The wishlist from the tax exile billionaires’ retreat at Farmleigh?
- There is a well-established ‘digital divide’ between the better-off and those not so fortunate. I grant you that denying the poor access to State services doesn’t seem likely to trouble the sleep of the stereotypical Sindo reader.
- A ‘Disneyland’ in Cork?
I’ll give him one idea, of increasing organic farming. But this seems likely to raise food prices for ordinary working joes – maybe not a concern for Mr. Webb and the other inhabitants of D4istan.
C’mon, Michael.
I don’t think there is any cash to spend as a result of the €800m savings in the bailout interest rate.We had’nt got the money to pay that anyway, so no favours there just pragmatism in action.The state need to create its own wealth independent of the private sector particulary through the use of our natural resources and I include Land as being the primary resource here.
I’m confused. Hasn’t the Sindo line always been “It’s the private sector that creates jobs”, so why would they need so much state support and aid?
Michael is right that there was some stuff that hinted at changing ideas this week. Carol Hunt, who I’ve noted before has been showing signs of realising that something might be wrong with the system, has an interesting piece this week in which she complains that the feckless are at the top and not at the bottom of the social scale.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-working-poor-and-their-lives-of-quiet-desperation-2829830.html
I wonder if Jean Burton will be reading it.
Come on guys. Can’t you see what BOC is saying is true?
We need to cut the wages of teachers, prison officers, nurses, guards, SNAs etc. They all have permanent, pensionable jobs. We’re having to cut services just to pay them. And by cut services, he means . . .
Well, I’m not sure what he means.
Clearly, they can’t have lost jobs or had their hours/pay cut, because as we all know, the public sector has been ringfenced!
Ah. I think I’ve got it:
Those who have lost their jobs in the public sector are now unemployed. And since those in the public sector have permanent jobs, those who have come to join the dole queues from the public sector, are now part of the private sector.
You see?
EWI – I agree with your scepticism on some of the details of his proposals. However, there are some positives: infrastructural investment (sans the PPPs) is positive and necessary; while next generation broadband and digital investment in schools is.another plus. Replacement schemes and VAT reductions are generally a positive counter-cyclical instrument – though it is doubtful how positive Irish business would make it (and scrappage schemes like cars are just a subsidy to foreign manufacturers). Large renewable projects would make good returns in the medium-term and companies like the ESB’s owned Ocean Energy should be given the appropriate level of investment to get on with it. Vouchers were frist proposed by James Stewart on Progressive-Economy – for restaurants and hotels (vouchers for everyone, not just public sector workers and certainly not as a substitute for pay).
The point is, if we can get the debate away from desultory and mind-numbing discussion of how much and where to cut public spending, and towards how much and where to invest – that would be a good day’s work. Personally, I believe such investment would have to be, of necessity, public sector-led. But to acknowledge that cuts won’t get us out of debt – that’s a big statement from the Sindo’s business editor and should be welcomed.
“Most idiotic statement in the Sindo ever?”
I think so yes.
As an antidote to the buhah over Kenny’s speech Kerrigan’s piece in the paper today is fantastic.
O’Connor’s line of thinking I think is reminiscent of comments from some of the more “respectable” members of Irish public life. I’m talking about Fergus Finlay who wrote in February that talk of the banks and bailouts was detracting from the important issues such as child poverty and so on. All the while seemingly accepting the “limits” of austerity and the IMF/EU programme which is based on greater poverty for the poor.
Another similar statement came from Age Action Ireland who criticised the government for cutting some slightly obscure welfare payments such as fuel allowance. They apparently “accept the need for cuts” and had hoped that cuts could be made that didn’t impact the vulnerable.
Such normalising by what is termed “civil society” of austerity, neoliberal policy and all of the injustice and inequality that goes with it is a great problem in my view and one that does not just reside in the pages of our favourite Sunday rag.
O’Connor’s line of thinking I think is reminiscent of comments from some of the more “respectable” members of Irish public life. I’m talking about Fergus Finlay who wrote in February that talk of the banks and bailouts was detracting from the important issues such as child poverty and so on. All the while seemingly accepting the “limits” of austerity and the IMF/EU programme which is based on greater poverty for the poor.
Another similar statement came from Age Action Ireland who criticised the government for cutting some slightly obscure welfare payments such as fuel allowance. They apparently “accept the need for cuts” and had hoped that cuts could be made that didn’t impact the vulnerable.
Such normalising by what is termed “civil society” of austerity, neoliberal policy and all of the injustice and inequality that goes with it is a great problem in my view and one that is not exclusive to our favourite Sunday rag.
I’ve a pair of old socks that has a higher IQ than the entire collective of Sindo writers.
The line that jumped out at me was: ” . . . we should be investing . . . in order to capitalise on the next boom . . .”
Well plaster me and call me a luxury semi-detached located in the Bog of Allen, can’t wait. The last boom worked out so well. And the the next silly shithead that says to me that FG saved us €600 million will have a size 9 surgically removed.
In aggregate the Irish nation has learned sweet fa since 2008. It is poised to grind itself into the ground again and again. Can we believe? Well, yes we can – any silly shit as long as you don’t ask me to remember what happened a couple of years ago and how we arrived at a situation where I’m paying interest on loans for money I didn’t borrow.
GBS got it right – the biggest open air asylum in Europe – maybe the world. The Sindo is just the poster child.
The ‘savings’ canard remind me of those ads with “Buy 2 for the price of 1 – save 9.99!” Like, I wasn’t even going to buy the one.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the reply. I agree with infrastructure and next-gen-bb being important ends that progressives should be working towards as a universal good, but look at what the Sindo is hiding beneath the lovely-sounding words – more profiteering for the private sector (Webb to my reading clearly envisages more PPPs) and the withdrawal of public services, to take the examples you picked. I can’t help but believe that the vouchers scheme is another trojan horse – what’s to stop them extending this to social welfare as well?
We’re dealing with people here who are ideologically wedded to opposing any and all activities of the modern social-democratic State, apart from giving the private sector subsidies and cracking the law’n'order whip over the lower classes. Ross and Webb are the last people I’d let get their foot in the door – the authors of “Wasters” have nailed their colours to the mast, even aside from being Sindo hacks.
How about John Paul McCarthy’s defence of the Murdoch empire? He has a doctorate from Oxford you know…
I’m surprised he found time from telling us how the poor old innocent British Empire was victimised by those horrible Irish rebels.