Sunday Independent not so Stupid Statement of the Week… December 1, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.trackback
…not sure if Garibaldy can do it this weekend. But this statement here from Brendan O’Connor was surprisingly to the point, when discussing the ‘top-ups’ issue.
Perhaps there is a lesson in this for all of us, about this Wild West where charity meets HSE. Perhaps there shouldn’t be a charity sector for providing essential services to sick people or people with disabilities.
We don’t rely on flag days to pay people on the dole, so why should we reduce the sick and the disabled to being afterthoughts, reliant on charity? Perhaps it is time to clean it all up now and for the State to provide for the needs, and the rights, of its most vulnerable citizens.
No one wants charity, and the events of the last few weeks prove that it doesn’t work very well anyway.
Okay, standard operating procedure resumes from here on in… any suggestions as to less helpful statements please fire ahead…
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Harris is in top form today: ‘The BP scouts, however, did not end as fascists. But the Fianna were being brainwashed by the same sort of blood and soil nationalists who were brainwashing German youth before World War One.’
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/eoghan-harris/eoghan-harris-time-to-call-a-halt-to-tg4s-executions-obsession-29798901.html
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Jim Cusack has big article on influence of Mao on Provos
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Quoting Tariq Ali with approval; must be a first in the Sindo.
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Wow, that’s an amazing column by EH. That’s a very strange logic he follows there too. The full quote is as follows:
“The BP scouts, however, did not end as fascists. But the Fianna were being brainwashed by the same sort of blood and soil nationalists who were brainwashing German youth before World War One. And that brainwashing would eventually end in the fascist Hitler Youth movement.”
But the Fianna didn’t end as a fascist movement. Quite the opposite, They were largely subsumed into the state, in varying waves and at various times. Only a tiny number remained antagonistic to the state and their political support was minimal. So what is the point other than to try to smear the Fianna with the brush of fascism.
Then there’s this:
“In reality, before 1916, many Irish people were content with the symbols of the British empire, such as the Union flag and the monarchy, as films of Royal visits attest. ”
It simply beggars belief that he takes that as evidence for… well…what? Such visits were stage managed events, that’s not to deny there was pro-monarchical sentiment. But how widespread given that theHR movement remained pre-eminent and other advanced nationalist organisations had significant support. One just waits for him to conflate ‘many’ with ‘most’.
And he’s recycling as with this:
“Right now most Irish adolescents receive their historical education from the internet. By and large, it is dominated by a toxic nationalist lobby, preaching the grisly gospels of Anglophobia and anti-Unionism. So what is Official Ireland doing to dispel the funereal fog of the past which fascinates so many of our young people ?”
How many Irish adolescents does he know? How many does he think are online? And what is the basis for that comment. And whoa re the toxic nationalist lobby. Second time he’s made the claim, I’d love to see some evidence.
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On the Harris thing, he says this:
But anyone who has read Pearse’s writings would agree the “cherishing” also applies to the physical and moral welfare of the children of the nation.
which is as may be, but does he include Pearse among the `blood and soil nationalists’? If he does, what’s to be said about the “cherishing”?
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I can’t bring myself to read the Cusack article. Was he just quoting the piece Tariq Ali had on the Guardian site last week? I can’t imagine he’s a regular item on Cusack’s menu.
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A disgraceful slur on our gallant allies in Europe! If Harris read the ‘Irish Political Review’ he would know that the German Empire was Europe’s first welfare state, that it had the strongest labour movement and socialist party in the world, and that it was forced to fight in order to maintain freedom of the seas, break British-inspired encirclement, defeat French revanchism and defend European civilisation against Czarist autocracy. Furthermore, Austria-Hungary was an enlightened multinational polity, a veritable EU in embryo, and Turkey was defending the Moslem world against a threatened carve-up by Anglo-French imperialism that has since reduced the Middle East to a state of chronic warfare and led to the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland.
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Not to mention their gallant victory in the Teutoborg Forest which halted the gallop of Roman Imperalism which might otherwise have blighted our fair island. And also the role which German people and the Trabant played in helping U-2 discover irony so they could make Achtung Baby and not break up (something I know we’re all thankful for). Not to mention their generosity in giving former Shamrock Rovers midfielder Noel Campbell a gig at Fortuna Cologne so he could come on for Ireland against Bulgaria in Sofia and get sent off immediately after a very entertaining kung-fu battle.
We are all Germans now.
Or, to translate it in German, Ve are Oll Germans Neu.
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And the arrival of Dan’Brien who does not define himself as a ‘neoliberal’
‘Dan O’Brien is joining the Independent group, where he will be writing for both the Irish Independent and the ‘Sunday Independent’.’
http://www.independent.ie/business/media/obrien-joins-top-team-of-economic-writers-29790575.html
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Thanks to WBS. From the editorial:
Recently there are signs that Labour is finding a way to chart a route out of its current state of ‘chassis’. The decision to target the coping classes via a series of initiatives as diverse as school uniforms, school book schemes, tax relief for home improvements and putative tax cuts is perhaps too overtly political. But given that this is a Government that has been far too disconnected from the experiences of its citizens for its own good, a small degree of old-style populism may for once represent no bad development.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/editorial-irish-politics-needs-labour-29798916.html
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Wrong paper, but… referring to the union leaders we have the following
“There was no economic or evidence-based rationale underpinning their demands for wage inflation. They demanded such inflation because the coffers of the state were full, or because a company’s profits were growing”
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Would that be One L Creighton in the SBP?
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Yes.
Dear Deputy C.,
A growth in a company’s profits is both an economic rationale and an evidence-based rationale for demanding a pay rise.
Yours sincerely,
The rest of the World.
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It’s a very contemporary form of belief about the (supposed) lack of relationship between wages and how well a company does in profit terms and consequent insanities in relation to wage inequality, isn’t it? Even if it’s unconscious. Telling.
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Growth of profits equals increase in worker productivity. Is it now being argued that an increase in productivity is not a good argument for a wage increase? If not, then what is?
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What a brilliant example of someone not knowing what they’re talking about. A couple of minutes thought or even a second look at the sentence might have given her pause. But no. I would imagine that she believes a workforce should never get a wage rise as all success is owed to the management who should be rewarded handsomely with ‘top-ups’ et al. The workers should not share in the success whatsoever, however they should be the first to take a pay cut when things go badly. My 11 year old could see the problem with this line of reasoning. Actually the eight year olds would probably manage it too.
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I wonder if some bright marketing spark has told her to use the term ‘inflation’ instead of ‘increase’, to promote subliminal fears among the hard-pressed middle classes about their savings going up in smoke and people having to cart around wheel-barrows full of worthless banknotes because greedy ESB pleb-scum are demanding ‘wage inflation’ so they can scoff cans of Dutch Gold and batter-burgers while watching their Sky Sports subscription on their flat-screen tellys, like the ill-bred bastards they are.
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And the less well off don’t have to worry about inflation? I think people should be fearful of a so called stimulus where money would be devalued as in the 1970s. Theres hardly a more dishonest way than induced inflation of reducing the standard of living of the weaker sections of society unable to secure corresponding increases in income.
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Ah, you never disappoint—now you’re arguing against wage increases and increases in public spending (‘a so-called stimulus’) because they might generate inflation. I believe Mario Draghi and Alan Greenspan take a similar view. But I suppose wage freezes have always been a tenet of socialism from your perspective.
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You’re very blithe in your dismissal of those who can’t protect themselves against inflation. Bit of the old Stalin end justifies the means attitude there.
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You always contrive to (deliberately) miss the point, misrepresenting what people say and trying to suck them into a morass of timewasting non sequitors. I’d imagine most people are wise to your game by now and have no intention of being dragged around the houses; I certainly don’t. But congratulations on bringing Stalin into the discussion so early; no doubt the mention of Lucinda C. planted auld Joe in your mind. In the interests of political ecumenism, should we bring in a Godwin’s Law for Stalin? Georgian’s Law maybe?
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“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
V.I. Lenin
In all seriousness though, inflation is desirable in small doses – anything up to 10% or thereabouts.
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Both wages and profits can increase by the same percentage increase in productivity without any increase in prices.
What has happened over the last 20 years or so, at least in the U.S, is that all of the increases in productivity have been appropriated by capital resulting in inequality growing to such an extent that even many conventional economists are now worried that this development has do depressed aggregate demand as to be a threat to economic growth. Hence the growing demands for a ‘living wage’ and for increases in the minimum wage.
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The current ‘New Yorker’ has an interesting piece on growing demand for an increased minimum wage, particularly in Seattle. Don’t have the link to hand but I think it’s free to access.
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http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/12/09/131209taco_talk_coll
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The Living wage demand is more to my taste. It is getting resonance around the place.
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Yes. ‘In a victory for workers’ rights advocates, nine more employers in Tompkins County have agreed to pay their workers a “living wage,” or the equivalent of $12.62 an hour.’
http://cornellsun.com/blog/2013/12/02/fight-for-living-wage-continues/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fight-for-living-wage-continues
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+1
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http://www.livingwage.org.uk/ Sounds reformist but with the government and ICTU and IBEC we have here it sounds revolutionary
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There’s a great US economics magazine called “Dollars and Sense”, they give very good covereage of these struggles
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[…] Tomboktu has already pointed to some problematic aspects of the following on this thread: […]
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