Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week September 25, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week, The Left.trackback
Garibaldy is indisposed so it falls to me to do a rapid search of the Sunday Independent to see what treasures it offers up.
Let us start with the front page and under the headline: Ross signs for Norris, 67% ‘no’ to Aras Provo [by the way the word Áras has a fada on it, as a quick visit here demonstrates - a small thing no doubt to some] we discover that that 67% is made up of… er… data from the indefatigable Quantum Research.
The Sunday Independent/Quantum Research poll has produced results broadly
in line with the results of a Millward Browne Lansdowne online poll for RTE News on Friday, which showed Mr Norris to be the frontrunner to win the election if nominated.
Our telephone poll of 500 people nationwide shows: David Norris (29 per cent); Michael D Higgins (17 per cent); Martin McGuinness (15 per cent); Gay Mitchell (12 per cent); Mary Davis (12 per cent); Sean Gallagher (nine per cent) and Dana Rosemary Scallan (six per cent).
You know, even on those figures you’d wonder why the panic down at Sunday Independent Central as regards McGuinness… but panic, or at least obsession there is, as pieces here, here [from Michael McDowell], here [of which more in a moment], here, here, here [again of which more later] , and here [Celia Larkin - natch!] prove. And that’s only the commentary – I haven’t bothered to examine the news section.
Anyhow, as far as I can determine Quantum Research has no existence outside the Sunday Independent and is not a member of the Association of Irish Market Research Organsiations, as are all other polling companies. Which might account for a certain loaded aspect to the questions… Check these out…
Those polled are equally definitive in relation to the issues which have so far come to dominate the campaign of the Sinn Fein candidate, Mr McGuinness.
In contrast to the position which Sinn Fein is attempting to adopt, 74 per cent said that the “violent past” of Mr McGuinness was relevant to the presidential election and 69 per cent said it was “too soon for a man of violence” to be President.
Hmmm…
Not necessarily stupid, but most certainly something to file under ‘should do more research’ is a piece by Ronan Fanning on why the above mentioned McGuinness is no man for the Áras. The reason for this apparently is that ‘This is the Republic of Ireland 2011 — not Northern Ireland’. Why that per se makes a difference is difficult to understand from the article itself which cautions against ‘rabid denunciations of what McGuinness did or did not do in the IRA since the mid-Seventies’ but then suggests that ‘McGuinness is utterly unfit to be President because what he personifies is the Provisional IRA.’ But note that Fanning – Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin – resorts to using the – ahem – Quantum Research poll to validate his thoughts…
That 74 per cent of respondents in today’s Sunday Independent poll think his violent past is relevant to the presidential campaign is reassuring. So, too, is the fact that 53 per cent believe he was wrong to have walked away from his job as Deputy First Minister.
Moving swiftly onwards… and for a moment bypassing the Presidential Election, don’t worry, we’ll get back to it shortly, what of Marc Coleman’s ‘Croke Park? More like Stroke or Broke Park’ wherein he makes the following fascinating analysis:
Depressingly, some of my colleagues are urging the Government to go down the failed strategy — economically failed and politically failed — of higher taxes. Stephen Collins, a commentator I like and admire, describes the household charge as some Holy Grail, an act of valiant necessity. It is nothing of the sort.
And…
…Following the successful strategy of Ray McSharry between 1987 and 1990, that budget left tax rates alone and cut spending.
With the exception of cuts in basic welfare rates — which were unjust and destructive (means testing welfare would have been fairer and less damaging to demand) — the other three crisis budgets followed the failed reverse approach pursued by Fine Gael and Labour in the mid-1980s of leaving spending alone and raising taxes. From an average 0.3 per cent between 1982 and 1986, economic growth shot up to an average of three per cent between 1987 and 1990. The mid-1980s strategy was an economic failure, and in the long run a failure politically, as it took Fine Gael another 31 years to get re-elected to office. By contrast, the government that took hard decisions between 1987 and 1990 was re-elected
Except, except, if one looks at the actual rates of taxation extant in the economy during that period one notices one fundamental flaw in his argument – and an indication that he doesn’t actually read Collins that closely given that the argument Collins makes is almost indistinguishable from his own…
Anyhow, back to the Presidential Election and Jody Corcoran who running with the idée fixe of the Sindo under the heading ‘McGuinness’s entry exposes moral ambiguity of establishment’ berates his fellow journalists for their temerity in not being concerned that ‘a leader of a terrorist organisation, such as he, could be President of Ireland.’
So pleased is he with this formulation that he offers it to the reader no less than three more times in the course of the piece.So he notes:
Predictably, none of the other candidates for the Presidency, when asked last week, expressed concern that a terrorist leader may end up in the Aras, which, to my mind, raises a question as to their suitability for the office.
And asks:
I mean, do we want a President who claims not to be unduly concerned that a leader of a terrorist organisation may end up President of Ireland?
And…
Presumably, McGuinness had in mind most of the journalists of the Sunday Independent, and some of elsewhere, when he sought to claim that it was only a few who were concerned that a terrorist leader could end up as President.
No messing around there with qualifiers such as the past tense – or the term ‘former’. And what of this which seems to run counter to the reports of the two governments and the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
Post-ceasefires, post-Good Friday, while the Provos were still unapologetic, still in existence — they still are – the establishment consistently sought to blur the lines.
One might reasonably ask though, given the word count and spread of commentators from the – er – Irish ‘establishment’ on display in his own paper today, whether he’s being entirely serious in his thesis.
A target rich environment this week, perhaps more so than most, and you’d probably not be wrong. But to be honest I’m sure others can find better… so by all means point us all in the direction of what you find.
BTW, worth reading is Shane Ross’s highly entertaining account of why he’s signing David Norris’s nomination papers but voting for… Michael D. Higgins!
The fox is in the hen house,hence all the squawking.A lot of the old reactionaries who wrote pieces slagging Norris would prefer him in the Park,rather a republican from Da Nort.What an exquisite dilemma.And all the gaybashers are impaled upon its horns!
Great way of putting it re fox in henhouse…
“Old reactionary” John Waters, certainly.
His piece this week in the IT was laughable for his efforts. He certainly wasn’t writing articles calling for Norris to be back in the running before El Diablo announced…
Slightly OT but it does reference the Sindo, the irrepressible Nick ‘Numptie’ Cohen on Martin McGuinness’s candidacy. The whole article is contender for Stupid Statement of the Decade.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/martin-mcguinness-presidency-ireland-ira?cat=commentisfree&type=article
In no way is that OT, an excellent find Neilcalf, it’s unbelievably OTT though of Cohen. Christ, if he gets something so easily checked so badly wrong….
And one doesn’t have to be in any sense partisan for McG or uncritical of the man or SF or armed struggle to gaze in awe at just how badly wrong his contentions are.
Ol Nick has never been troubled by things like facts if they get in the way of a good rant against ‘totalitarians’.
For some reason folks never give Nick enough credit for his brave stand against cruel and all powerful, er, anti-war protesters, small far left groups, Noam Chomsky and tiny Bangladeshi communalist factions in Tower Hamlets Labour Party.
+1 neilcalf.
So it’s only the brave journalism of the bold Henry and his pal Jim that stands between Ireland and a Provo president?
I’ll give Nick the benefit of the doubt and assume he hasn’t been following the campaign closely enough to notice that almost the entire commentariat has lined up to give MMcG a kicking.
So it must be the case that someone – I don’t know who – has given Nick an inadequate briefing.
“…someone – I don’t know who…”
Excellent, that raised a smile on this Monday morning which is welcome… But you’re spot on… Poorly briefed is our nick…
wonder are pissed off they wasted ‘tribal timebomb’ on mcaleasse.
A similar sort of thought struck me. In a way they expended so much ammunition on her, EH in particular that it makes the present issue much more difficult for them.
Yis missed out on Emer O’Kelly’s peach of a spasm defending the cherished rights to free speech of one Nick Griffin.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/free-speech-is-what-protects-us-from-the-poison-of-fascism-2886787.html
“If we deny them the oxygen of free speech, we will drive their poison underground where it can fester and destroy the entire foundations of our society.”
I wonder how she feels about McGuinness…
Feck it, I was going to reference her. But that’s a great quote from her. No doubt next week we’ll all be educated as to her thoughts on the issue of McG.
Emer O’Kelly is supposed to be some class of a literary critic, believe it or not. Purely on literary grounds, she should be put to something more suited to her talents.
Those metaphors are so mixed it hurts. Do things only fester in the absence of oxygen? Can poison fester? Can things fester underground? Has there ever been a case of a house’s foundations being undermined by festering poison? If you just look at that sentence, it means absolutely nothing. There’s nothing there but a generic frothing at the mouth, a throwing together of negative-sounding phrases for effect.
I sometimes imagine that the Sindo office contains a big wheel of phrases that is spun to fill in the gaps in sentences. Who knows where it will stop: “bloated public sector”… “IRA apologists”… “social welfare cheats”…? Wherever it lands, shove it in, and the less sense it makes the better.
You know, you may be all too accurate in your thought about a big wheel.
“Every man, woman and child in Britain is the grandchild or great grandchild of a soldier who listened to Winston Churchill telling them he had nothing to offer them except blood and tears. And in 1945, the old man’s “victory” sign became a reality, the reward of the blood and tears.”
Every one? Every last one?
Scroll down, Michael…
Technically I suppose there’s a line between saying McGuinness is “not right for the Aras” and he “should not be allowed run”.
I wonder how the people saying the latter feel about Mr. Griffin’s cherished right to free speech.
Shane Ross’ hatchet job on Mary Davis is worth a look:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/shane-ross/shane-ross-quango-queen-eyes-the-park-2886869.html
I never took a liking a Mary Davis, primarily because I think she is yet another crypto-FF candidate, but people really have daggers out for this woman. The Phoenix has a whole spread on her links to Denis O’Brien. In the above piece, Ross tells us how she was made a director of the DAA, the Irish Civil Servants Building Society, and the ‘Bertie Bowl’ all the FF regime. She was also appointed to the board of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland and undoubtedly encountered Denis O’Brien through her work there.
Once again, McDowell comes across as a rather sad character. His article consists of an attack on McGuinness, thus he falls in with Fine Gael strategy, and includes what must be the most crude form of toadying I have seen in a newspaper article:
“There is a widespread feeling, I think, that we are not being offered the best choice of President. John Bruton would, I feel, be strolling home to the Aras, had he chosen to stand. Maybe the same might have been thought about Pat Cox, had he been nominated.”
Bruton, while possibly a better candidate than Gay Mitchell (although, the same could be said about an inanimate carbon rod) would never have struck me as a candidate who would ‘stroll’ to the Aras. This is a man who people -politely- referred to as a ‘technocrat’, putting him in the same set as Al Gore. This does not make for a man who will sail through the glorified beauty contest that is the Presidential Election. How Bruton would survive in a personality driven contest against any of the other candidates is hard to see.
One should also take account of the faint praise he gives his former party colleague, Pat Cox.
I believe the McDowell and Bruton familes know one another well.
Anyway, is McDowell not going to stand himself? Surely he’s the one man who (etcetcetc)
Strangely no, he’s not…
By the way Rosencrantz, that’s very true re the media wide stuff agin Davis. She’s certainly not my cup of tea but I was surprised at the attention she’s been getting and in the unlikeliest of places. The Phoenix piece was very very strong I thought for someone whose chances I would have thought were slim enough.
The treatment of Davis is odd. On the one hand, I think it does demonstrate that there is still considerable bad feeling towards Fianna Fail and all those associated with Fianna Fail.
Yet, Sean Gallagher has not received quite the same level of vitriol (at least, not as far as I can see), and his FF connections are possibly greater than Davis’s. Part of it could be due to her portrayal as a saint figure, to borrow a bit from Shane Ross’s article. I have always believed that Irish people love a repentant sinner and distrust all others.
I know that I was quite annoyed to hear that she was lobbying Oireachtas members despite having secured the requisite number of county councils; this was a cynical move which could only have been designed to block other candidates. Offending the general sense of fair play (particularly when the man you fouled is quite a well-liked character and political insider) tends to provoke reprisals.
And finally, that she was, until Dana, the only woman in the running probabky had some impact.
The lobbying thing wasn’t great was it? But it’s an interesting one. I wonder if she’s been afflicted by the same dynamic as Adi Roche? Too ‘do-gooder’ for want of a better term?
Davis is being got at because she has a chance and will be very transfer friendly. Were she to increase her poll rating by 5% she would be very much in the frame.
The length and breath of the country there are signs or monuments outside towns and villages saying that they hosted a team from some place for The Special Olympics.
As a person she comes across as nice (although quiet and reserved).
Currently the debate is centred around dates of IRA membership, IRA attrocities, sexuality, The age of consent etc. Davis, through her work with the Special Olympics is the opposite of all this, shes seen as positive.
Its yet to come up but there must be some article ready to go on Michael D’s age. In some of the more informal photos he’s looked very old. Someone said to me that at times he’s looked like an old farmer outside a mart… all that was missing was a bailing twine belt.
Rosenetc.
I believe she’s wrapped up eight(?) councils as well – which, seeing she only needed four tends to support your hypothesis…
“I believe she’s wrapped up eight(?) councils as well – which, seeing she only needed four tends to support your hypothesis…”
Davis currently has twelve councils, and is asking for more before close of business on Wednesday.
Here’s another very odd sentence from Emer O’Kelly:
‘ Every man, woman and child in Britain is the grandchild or great grandchild of a soldier who listened to Winston Churchill telling them he had nothing to offer them except blood and tears.’
Every man, woman and child? Hardly.
I don’t know what the blessed Emer thought about the ban on the ‘free speech’ of paramilitary organisations on the news bulletins she was presenting in the eighties – can anyone clarify?
‘ Every man, woman and child in Britain is the grandchild or great grandchild of a soldier who listened to Winston Churchill telling them he had nothing to offer them except blood and tears.’
Really, that comes under “do these people ever think what they’re writing before they write it?”
So all those UK males inelegible for military service and
Conscientious objectors never had kids, did they?
I used to like Emer O’Kelly’s articles, but she’s really gone
downhill lately.
Slight digression, but it’s not well known that Stalin abolished the right of Soviet citizens to plead conscientious objection. The Soviets had previously allowed COs to take noncombatant roles in the Red Army. It’s in the Brock and
Young book “Pacifism in the Twentieth Century”.
I did not know that. Typical of the man one suspects.
So all those UK males inelegible for military service and
Conscientious objectors never had kids, did they?
I don’t know Crocodile was specifically thinking of, but while that’s a useful point, my did-they-really-say-that?reaction was based on the fact that there has really been quite a lot of immigration into Britain since the War and while some of their parents and grandparents did indeed serve in the armed forces, really quite a lot did not. And this really isn’t something obscure, it’s absolutely fantastic not to realise this.
@ croc…
Hmmm… I can guess
What amazes me is this ejh. You and I have written online over years and we’d think fairly long and carefully about putting stuff up online because we know that it will very likely be critiqued so we try to produce stuff that is as internally logical and consistent as is possible. Doesn’t always work, but the effort is there. Whereas week after week we keep seeing examples of people who simply… don’t… seem… to care.
Comments keep people honest. No doubt about it.
Well, except on ‘Comment is Free’, much of the time.
Yeah, that’s true. I guess then it’s an issue of moderation… in every sense of the word?
[...] Sunday Independent newspaper makes for incredible reading. There is one subject and one subject only; Martin McGuinness. And one clear strategy: [...]
The stupidty doesn’t end of a Sunday obviously.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/alison-orsquoconnor-we-donrsquot-want-a-president-with-skeletons-in-closet-2887135.html
“I don’t much like Northern Ireland.”
“Whatever else we may learn about … Tony Blair, I will never lose my admiration for how the two of them showed such incredible patience…”
Anyone got the latest death toll from Iraq and Afghanistan?
“Growing up in an apolitical house, I was only vaguely aware of the North as a child. Later, as a young journalist, I remember being sent to Belfast to work and disliking it intensely. Part of that was my sense that I really did not have a good grip on the situation”
“Sinn Fein’s stridency, smugness and daft economic policies….”
Does “apolitical” specifically denote not having a particular political allegiance to a party or a particular political allegiance to an ideology? Since she’s one of the many doctrinal actors to regurgitate TINA on behalf of the Very Rich People, in her dismal here of SF’s “daft” economic policies she reveals that she is indeed, very political.
I think it’s worth referencing this excellent interview with Kathleen Lynch:
http://mediabite.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/the-forgotten-constituency-the-majority-and-the-irish-economic-crisis/
“The media is not remotely balanced. There is no question that there is a media elite about whom a lot of questions need to be asked. … They become aligned with political parties. They get their stories from political parties so they are not truly independent in their political judgment. ”
Anyway, I found this one a bit bizarre:
“You also hear of possible votes for him from unexpected sources, such as the friend who had a coffee with a large group of south Dublin mothers a few days ago who said their husbands were very taken with McGuinness. That’s hardly a natural constituency.”
Maybe I can’t read the paragraph properly but is she talking about *her* friends and *their* husbands?
Thanks for the link to the Kathleen Lynch interview. Most of what she said resonated with my own views, especially about the need for a progressive centre-left news media in this country. Media plurality in Ireland is simply non-existent (unless one counts the Vincent Brown show and a handful of others, very much lone voices in the wilderness).
In fact there is more of a challenge offered to to the Establishment consensus in the new Irish language media than in their English language rivals. In its own small way the consistent output of contemporary and historical documentaries (both domestic and international) from TG4 has challenged much of the recent orthodoxy of the Daorstát Éireann elite.
And the best leaders’ debate of the general election was on the channel, with some real questions thrown at the polticos for once.
Even Gaelscéal (which I don’t entirely agree with, at least in its present form) will run stories questioning the “agreed narrative”, albeit mainly because of locally based issues in Irish-speaking communities.
One sees more plurality in the many blogs based in Ireland than one sees in the national news media. That is certainly true in a republican or nationalist context but more generally too. Irish bloggers tend to be anti-establishment, centre-left, progressive, liberal and reformist. And most regard the economic policies currently being pursued as utterly delusional.
Many of these people are obviously well educated, creative, informed and capable of expressing their opinions. Yet you will never see them gracing the pages of the Sindo. The Irish news media is a class of its own, with its own rules and entry requirements that few will ever meet (nor desire to meet!).
Perhaps it is time for a centre-left media entity to take root here? A “collective” effort like the CLR but more generally “news-like” and entirely web-based?
Maybe its time for CLR to spread its wings? Now, there is a news organisation I’d like to see expressed on my iPAD or mobile. An “Irish Guardian”…!