SF: ‘Pathetic?’… Not so sure about that now… July 6, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Sinn Féin, The Left.trackback
Hard to entirely take seriously what is reported in the Irish Times from the debate on the NTMA bond sale yesterday in the Dáil.
She asked if the Government would “finally honour” the caps on salaries to political advisors.
But Mr Quinn retorted: “I will take no lecture from a party whose military wing visited two and a half decades of austerity on this island.”
He then announced the bond sale results and when Ms McDonald started to intervene as he spoke, the Minister said: “You can’t even accept good news, God love you,” adding “you’re really pathetic”.
Is it good news? Will this ease the burden of austerity? The Guardian report here is useful in terms of puncturing any complacency.
And does he really think that the line about ‘austerity’ in relation to the IRA has much purchase? I ask that in terms of its utility, not in terms of its entirely questionable logic. For many, perhaps most SF voters the period from 1970 to 1990 (let’s be honest, that was the high period of IRA activity) is long long ago. The sort of equivalent to the 1950s and 1960s to myself. I simply don’t think that that has the traction he thinks it has. But more to the point he should realise that a critique of a past is simply not enough when people are faced with the present. Or to put it at its pithiest ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. It always will be the economy in a context of almost 15 per cent unemployment and falling economic metrics and unless the LP faces up to this they’re going to be permanently on the back foot.
It’s not that SF is beyond criticism. Leftists and Republicans, whether friendly or antagonistic can and should critique them. That’s part and parcel of political activity and discourse and increasingly necessary as they increase in influence.
But the ‘pathetic’ jibe, that’s really pointless. Perhaps Quinn thinks that will work to fend off a rising SF. If so I fear he will be sorely disappointed.
Only a few months ago Gilmore was telling SF to put on the green jersey and only a few month before that Joan said the country was banjaxed.
Rare I agree with Roy Foster, but he pointed out in ‘Luck and the Irish’ that Ruairi Quinn was so blithely indifferent to what happened in the North that he gave his autobiography the same title as Paddy Devlin’s. I’ve read chunks of Devlin’s, and he has a lot of interesting things to report about the Falls curfew, internment, Sunningdale etc. I haven’t read Quinn, but I imagine it could be a good insomnia cure.
Quinn’s interviews were a real highlight of the “Labour’s Way” programme. So smug, so self-righteous, so oily.
SF are not beyond criticism and won’t be at the pro-life rally in Belfast tomorrow. It would be hypocritical of the left and other reds to defend the innocent but then again do the ‘left’ in Ireland claim to be Nationalists.
What does that even mean Owen?
i’d say it has resonence with some demoraph or other other wise he wouldn’t have said it. i work with a young fella who is allways reguritating lines like this he reads in the papers. think he has helped the labour party out in past elections as well.
Hard to disagree with that point. But I’d love to know how big that demographic is and how big he thinks that demographic is!
I’d love to know if he knows what a demographic is.
I’d imagine it’s big enough in Dublin SE, which is probably the only place where he meets people who aren’t politicians, journalists or his immediate family. Might not play so well in the rest of the country.
Sounds depressingly accurate to me. I’ve a great doc which one say I’ll post up in the Left Archive, an history of the LP in DSE released some time in the past ten years or so. Guess who figures prominently in it?
Noel Browne?
Welllll….
wbs ‘But I’d love to know how big that demographic is and how big he thinks that demographic is’
women and over 50′s i’d say. watching the paddy power red c polls when they come out they print the brake downs on that one. SF do noticbley poor with women, over 50′s and ABC1. guessing thats why mary lou is pushed forward so much by thar party so they have a personality that can identify with those groups and why she gets personal attacks about her wieght apperance etc opponents trying to demonise/neurtalise her. maybe that quinn made than comment in responce to mary lou is telling.
That’s true. and it makes sense, from a partisan political stance. Still desperate stuff, isn’t it?
suppose.
I’ve always wondered what Quinn is doing in the Labour Party given that, more than anyone else there, he’s always seemed to regard any form of left wing thought as entirely obnoxious to his finely calibrated intellect.
Surprisingly little media comment about the fact that the unemployment rate is now 14.9%, the highest in almost twenty years. The waste of potential which this figure, which would be much higher were it not for emigration, represents is quite shocking. Back in the eighties when the rate was over 15% between 1984 and 1989 unemployment was the major political issue. Commentators now seem to have become so obsessed with money and the markets that it doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. Austerity will probably send it a few points higher, giving us the wonderful spectacle of a government presiding over an 18% plus unemployment rate being praised for its sound financial administration and realistic policies.
Very true re Quinn.
That point about unemployment is something that really troubles me. It simply isn’t an issue in the way it was in 1986. I find that shocking.
It comes back to what I think CL or CMK said a week or two back along the lines about a shift in the emphasis of the market being subservient to the society, even if only rhetorically, to the market now being the expression of the society. I’m not quoting them right but you get the gist of it.
That’s the conceptual shift, and it’s one that the crisis has reinforced rather than weakening. Effing amazing.
It simply isn’t an issue in the way it was in 1986. I find that shocking.
Something not dissimilar in the UK, comparing now to (say) 1981. It’s just far more acceptable to shrug and blame and victims.
As has been suggested here before, a full generation of managers has now been educated in right-wing university business schools. They never question that employees are not resources or colleagues, just ‘cost base’. They boast of providing employment, but begrudge every cent of every wage bill: that’s the ‘common sense’ taught to them by the Colman McCarthys and Sean Barretts. How then can unemployment stir their consciences?
Not sure I’d be Barrett and McCarthy quite in the same category, but don’t disagree with the generaity.
have started to notice something of a trend as regards fellas i would have known, coming home after two years in Oz, and not being able to get sponsorship for the next couple of years. Other than coming home, their only option is to stay illegal in Australia, which is tricky enough. I think for those looking to travel for work nowadays have less options than previous generations
Was just talking about that yesterday, the youth unemployment rates across Europe are such that the chances of picking up the sort of casual work to get you started in another country must be a lot lower than they were back in the 80s when people could be more or less guaranteed to find some sort of work in the major cities of Britain, Holland, Geramany etc.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0519/1224316340962.html
Europe 2012 is a different place than the 1980s. Back then the opportunities to emigrate America, Canada, Oz, cont. Europe were great because those countries already have large inflows of labour, bigger by many factors than the 80s than them all.
Whether that fact results can be extended to a conlusion that across those traditional Irish emigrant countries there are now significantly less opportunities for Irish emigrs. is something I’d be interested in knowing.
Anecdotally are people aware of young Irish emigrants who left only to return within a “short” time frame due to unfavourable opportunities in their targetted countries.
on your point about people coming home because of lack of opportunities, iam aware of some incidences yes but i am also aware of similar cases in previous waves.
personally think austrailia and canada have taken the place of the usa and london in past generations in that there is an impression that the streets are paved with gold. might be conspiritorial saying this but get the impression that our media reinforce that idea.
there was a docomentry on bbc3 last week, getting passed around on youtube. coming here soon. goes around the world looking at different countires going through recession from the point of view of a young english woman. the way she approched our emigration problem showed the folly of it in a way the irish media wouldn’t http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsAm6Ycg7Cs&feature=relmfu
but you’ll never get the full picture. There’ll always be censorship. Right or wrong reporting that there is large scale emigration and painting that as a loss of an entire generation is not factually correct.
in 2011 every single Irish national who emigrated was matched by an immigrating person. Actually 2300 more immigrants came into the country than Irish left it.
I appreciate where you are coming from and I fully agree with you but I think its fair, if likely not the done thing, to point out there there is framing of the story going on from every side. RTE will frame it by ignoring the scale of destruction being wrought once again, just like the 80s, by emigration, others will frame it by ignoring that unlike the 1980s every Irish national who leaves is matched, and exceeded, by someone arriving.
As I say not the done thing to mention that but it is part of the story. The Irish media wont show the full story but who can blame them because exploring every aspect of the story isnt going to happen anyhow. The question then is whose partial take gets the air-time. Is one better than the other. Thats subjective. Either is likely incomplete.
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/population/2011/Population%20and%20Migration%20Estimates%20April%202011.pdf
sorry, iam probrably reading that wrong. but it says net migration -34,000. your saying there is another story that each emgrant is being replaced by an immigrant?
Thats part of the story. The outward migration consists of two groups – Irish and returning migrants. If the returning migrants are stripped out as just that returning migrants and you look at the figures of leaving Irish – and thats how this is portrayed in the media – the denuded GAA teams etc rather than about a migrant worker moving on to London etc then thats the picture that arises.
“The number of immigrants also increased over the same 12 month period from 30,800 to 42,300. While this has resulted in overall net outward migration remaining broadly constant with the previous twelve month period (34,100 and 34,500 respectively) net outward migration among Irish nationals increased from 14,400 in April 2010 to 23,100 in April 2011. Over the same period net outward migration of non-Irish nationals nearly halved from 20,200 to 11,000.”
So yes basically for every media spun tale of a player leaving a GAA team short there is actually 1.5 persons entering the state.
According to that report, migration figures are as follows:
Emigration
Irish: 40,200
Other: 34,200
Immigration
Irish: 17,100
Other: 25,200
Net Migration
Irish: -23,100
Other: -11,000
And rewriting that 1st para. from pidgin into English:
2012 is a different place than the 1980s. Back then the opportunities to emigrate America, Canada, Oz, cont. Europe were greater than today because today those countries already have large inflows of labour, bigger by many factors than the 80s.