Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week December 28, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
I had assumed Christmas being a Sunday meant there would be no Sunday Independent. Clearly a product of my absence of the go-getting mindset required to be top businesspeople like the people who run the Sindo. People like me are the reason the country’s in the state it is, clearly. Not huge picking this week in what seems to be a slimmed down edition, but good to see that the year is ending as it began for the Sindo. The unions are destroying us all says Carol Hunt.
But when the prospect of a downturn was imminent they were all hands on deck again as they deftly masterminded the ring-fencing of their already artificially inflated salaries and pensions (benchmarking II) for the foreseeable future. And so the extraordinary Croke Park Agreement was born — which may consign more than half the country to poverty, unemployment and desperation — but happily for its architects — not the half that matters to them.
Maybe Santa will bring the Sindo a new broken record for next year.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
What a dreadful excuse for an article.
On a slight tangent, it seems George Orwell ranks with
H. L. Mencken as a the writer most quoted by stupid
people to make their articles seem intelligent.
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Yep, Orwell must be spinning in his grave at the way he has been adopted by reactionary news columnists and neo liberal politicians in the western world. Indeed, he would have written a great article about it if he were alive.
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This “the Croke Park Agreement causes unemployment” meme has just appeared out of nowhere in the past couple of weeks. I saw Inda Kenny claim it in the Sunday Oirish Mail this weekend, so I’m guessing it’s origin is in a new Government spin campaign.
I wonder what the agenda here is? What’s going to be hit? Is there an impasse in negotiations with labour or the unions over the next cutbacks? Or is it just a distraction tactic after FG’s disaster with the household charge?
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I have been informed by a reliable enough source that there is an ongoing effort by individual government departments to create as many obstacles as possible to union compliance with the Croke Park Agreement. There is a clear desire, now, on the part of government to collapse the agreement. The Sindo and the other papers have obviously been briefed on their mission in this regard and we’ll see plenty of these types of articles this year; gathering in intensity and foolishness as the year progresses.
I think the government is, possibly correctly, wagering that if they break the Agreement, or create conditions such that the unions could not continue to adhere to it, the resulting industrial action will be small scale, half-hearted and will peter out in a couple of weeks. Over the course of that time it’ll be all hands on deck in the Sindo, IT, RTE, Newstalk, SBP as whatever strikes or actions are ongoing. Workers in the public sector, who are demoralised enough as it is and who know there is a poisonous hostility towards them from many other workers (which is just where government wants them to be), won’t have the ideological resources or arguments to sustain even medium term industrial action.
The government know that the wind would be in their sails if they could surreptitiously renege on Croke Park and that they would have some assistance in that regard from the union bureaucrats who will be far more comfortable smothering the resulting resistance among their members than they would be attempting a protracted struggle.
The only hope – a very long shot – is that the organised left in the unions could convince their colleagues their only option is an organised fightback that will be long and arduous and divisive. A difficult enough task in the past but probably, given the configuration of political and ideological forces in this state, impossible nowadays.
So, 2012, will probably witness another series of huge setbacks for workers. There’s still a ways to go down the slippery slope…
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“Earlier this year the World Bank ranked Ireland as the No 1 location in the eurozone for ease of doing business while the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom also ranked Ireland as No 1 in Europe for economic freedom.”-Brian Hayes, Minister of State at the Department of Finance.
This is, no doubt, very consoling for the 25 per cent of the labour force that can’t find a full time job, and for the 70,000 who were feeling so free that they left the country.
It does not occur to Mr. Hayes that the neoliberal policies praised by the right-wing Heritage Foundation may have something to do with the catastrophic economic situation. But then his government is implementing an even more extreme version of these right-wing policies.
The way out of the economic calamity is, according to Mr. Hayes, ‘Positive Thinking’, -the pop psychology of the crack-pot cleric, Norman Vincent Peale.
Its a very sobering reality that dolts like Brian Hayes are now running the state.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/brian-hayes-a-rising-tide-will-lift-all-our-boats-2972926.html
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Positive thinking?
Sing along!
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