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What you want to say – 18th January, Week 3, 2017 January 18, 2017

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. GW - January 18, 2017

So there will be an election campaign in the North and it couldn’t come at a better time. It will be a chance to get the consequences of Brexit for the island of Ireland into the open. And now we know that , firstly, Brexit will take place within two and a half years, and secondly, what type of Brexit that will be.

While one would hope that issues of political economy would perhaps bubble up, the political landscape has been defined by the nationalist right and the issue is likely to be the border, post Brexit.

I’d hope that RoI and SF push for the maintainance of an open border. They should insist that the British(English) ruling class faces up to the consequences of its march into Enoch Powell territory and maintains it’s anti-foreigner and anti-foreign-goods border in its own Ferry ports and Airports. Goddess knows their security state is big and intrusive enough.

Of course the DUP will push for a hard border between the two parts of the island, in contravention of the GFI. It suits both their raison d’être and their investment in the local security state. Whether Lexiteers will line up with them remains to be seen.

Whether a follower to the GFI can and must be negotiated, given that one of the parties (namely Britain guaranteed by the EU), will no longer exist, also remains to be seen.

It may well be that, after the dust settles, NI turns out to be some kind of grey zone between the British(English – Scotland may have left by then) authoritarian capitalist state and the EU.

I’d certainly invest in smuggling stocks right now.

Lastly the DUP and the British(English) government will seek to promote Irexit within the RoI. They’d rather not have a land border with the EU. A weak and isolated RoI would suit them. Doubtless numbers in the media will line up to help them, paid or unpaid.

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CL - January 18, 2017

‘’I’d hope that RoI and SF push for the maintainance of an open border. They should insist that the British(English) ruling class faces up to the consequences of its march into Enoch Powell territory and maintains it’s anti-foreigner and anti-foreign-goods border in its own Ferry ports and Airports”-GW above.

Won’t happen;

From Theresa May’s speech:

“we will put the preservation of our precious Union at the heart of everything we do….
It was a vote to restore, as we see it, our parliamentary democracy, national self-determination, …
A stronger Britain demands that we do something else – strengthen the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom….
our guiding principle must be to ensure that – as we leave the European Union – no new barriers to living and doing business within our own Union are created,”

‘No new barriers’-strengthening the Union of the four nations of the UK. That’s plain enough.

But the CTA must also be preserved.

” maintaining that Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland will be an important priority for the UK in the talks ahead….
So we will work to deliver a practical solution that allows the maintenance of the Common Travel Area with the Republic, while protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom’s immigration system.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/17/theresa-mays-brexit-speech-full/

The ‘practical solution’ proposed?

“Britain is seeking to shift the frontline of immigration controls to Ireland’s ports and airport
“Our focus is to strengthen the external border of the common travel area [CTA], building on the strong collaboration with our Irish partners.”-said proconsul Brokenshire.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Charles Flanagan, said he welcomed Brokenshire’s commitment to an invisible north-south border and agreed on the importance of an intelligence-led approach to curbing illegal immigration across the Irish border”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/09/britain-to-push-post-brexit-uk-immigration-controls-back-to-irish-border

However extending the UK border to include the ROI raises some difficulties:

Will Sinn Fein agree to this? Will Fianna Fail?

Will this diminution of sovereignty require a referendum?

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botheredbarney - January 18, 2017

Here’s some gee-ography for starters: “the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom”. There are three nations in the UK – Eng-Scot-Wal. Northern Ireland is a ‘province’ (some would say two-thirds of a province).

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2. GW - January 18, 2017

Brexit will continue to be a major blow for the working class living in Britain(England) but one positive aspect is that the power of the City of London will be significantly reduced within Britain(England).

There is absolutely no prospect that the CoL will maintain its rights to EU business. The Euro-Dollar dominance was what made is so influential in the first place.

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oconnorlysaght - January 18, 2017

The Great Wen may be a lesser one thanks to Brexit. It will still dominate what’s left of the Brit/English economy as the result of the (pre-euro) changes begun by Thatcher, who can be said to have given up on Brit industry. Certainly,it is the working people who will suffer most. Can resistance be built? It must be.
Incidentally, we should not be too smug. The ROI went down the same road under Haughey’s last governments, though, admittedly, this followed a quarter century of disindustriallisation under St.Whitaker’s neo-liberal pioneering reforms.

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3. GW - January 18, 2017

Waterford Whispers is spot on in a way that the MSM daren’t.

OUTGOING US President Barack Obama has rightly been hailed as a hero after he commuted the sentence of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, after allowing her to be subjected to inhumane conditions and torture for seven years.

In an act which speaks to the character and open hearted nature of the sure to be missed leader, president Obama allowed Manning to remain in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, despite the military woman never been charged with any crime.

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Ed - January 18, 2017

It was especially cute, in the BBC story on this pardon, Obama’s spokesman said that they couldn’t possibly give the same treatment to Snowden, because he hadn’t submitted to the US legal system. After tormenting Chelsea Manning for the best part of a decade, with no guarantees that she would be released before 2040 or whenever the maximum date was, they expected Snowden to meekly surrender to the same authorities and trust in their fairness.

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Alibaba - January 18, 2017

Spot on indeed. Isn’t it heart warming to see Obama, that remarkable human being, put into context? Here is the outgoing chief executive of the dominant capitalist power. The same man who lies convincingly to do the will of the US state machine. The same man who shed tears over his failure to address gun laws, never mind the horrific bombing of thousands of non-US civilians abroad. The same man who knows of the US encirclement of China by US naval bases which, according to the Pentagon, do not exist. It’s revolting.

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yourcousin - January 18, 2017

Well thank goodness we’re going to see the back side of that guy. And I’m doubly thankful his heir apparent didn’t get in. At least now folks will have someone who will believe Assange over the CIA and is dedicated to making peace with Russia.

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dublinstreams - January 19, 2017

very very tireome suggestion by yourcousin the criticism for person A suggests support for person B, :/

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yourcousin - January 19, 2017

I’m sorry that I offend with pointing out there things are about to get a lot worse. I guess we’re all just waiting for the Great Leap Forward.

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RosencrantzisDead - January 20, 2017

Worse?

Well, I suppose Trump could provide arms to ISIS and claim he’s doing it to protect democracy.

Wait a second…

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yourcousin - January 20, 2017

RiD
Laugh now and be smug. I hope you do get the last laugh honestly, but my gut tells me that folks will be wishing they did have Obama to bitch about again shortly.

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RosencrantzisDead - January 20, 2017

I am not laughing; there is nothing funny about this.
But let us not pretend that we are saying goodbye to some glorious era of liberal foreign policy.

And let us not throw tantrums when someone points this out,

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Ed - January 20, 2017

I expect that a few months or years of Trump certainly will make people look back nostalgically on the Obama years. The worse it gets, the warmer the nostalgia will be. And they won’t be wrong to think that things were better, or less bad. That’s another reason to hate Trump; he’ll make people look back on a pretty shabby record as if it was an awesome list of accomplishments (I remember how the Bush years made people look back warmly at Clinton’s time in power). Take the Middle East: after we’ve seen Trump fawn over Netanyahu and his cronies, egg them on to massacre Palestinian civilians, and possibly go to war with Iran in partnership with the Israelis (or just give them the go-ahead to launch an attack of their own), people will probably look back on the Obama/John Kerry years as a golden age of even-handed American diplomacy—a time when the US government would criticize the Israelis every now and again, in between ramping up the handouts and protecting them from scrutiny at the UN. And they won’t be wrong to perceive a difference; even a marginal difference can be a matter of life and death for people on the ground in Gaza or other parts of the world. But it’s worth drawing up an honest balance-sheet of the Obama years right now, before the nostalgia kicks in, so people remember that in opposing Trump, we’re not just fighting to turn the clock back to October 2016.

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Alibaba - January 20, 2017

Trump may be impeached. Or he may inflict terrible crimes on people. We don’t know. But there is a danger in taking sides with Obama because he comes across as the less objectionable leader. I think we must be against not just the Trumps but the Obamas of this world. Just saying …

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yourcousin - January 21, 2017

It’s the kids birthday today and I already got in trouble because I was at work when he woke up. The comments are thoughtful. Try to respond to them tonight from my computer instead from the phone.

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crocodileshoes - January 21, 2017

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-readers-war
Tenure Cole’s piece is. A few years old but worth rereading this week.

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4. CL - January 18, 2017

Its now less than 48hrs to the apocalypse,-also known as The Inauguration.

So far about 60 congress members, following John Lewis, are boycotting. That’s about 30 per cent of the Democratic representatives.
https://www.boston.com/news/history/2017/01/18/a-nation-of-dissent-the-most-famous-inaugural-protests-in-u-s-history.

There’s also another boycott going on.

Spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, ragtime, rock and roll, rap,-all that distinctively American contribution to world culture by African American will be conspicuously absent from Trump’s celebration.

Why?

“Trump’s use of racism as a campaign tool laid the foundations for what will be a concerted effort to delegitimize the history of civil rights struggles in our country….
his denigration of Representative John Lewis on the Martin Luther King holiday weekend sends a message that he intends to fulfill promises to his white voters to try and reverse the course of racial emancipation.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/opinions/trump-following-authoritarian-playbook-ben-ghiat/index.html

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CL - January 19, 2017

It should be noted that Trump’s racism predates his entry into presidential politics.
In 1989 when five black and Hispanic teenagers were accused of rape Trump was in full lynch-mob mode, taking out ads in newspapers demanding:
BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY.
BRING BACK OUR POLICE!

Having together spent a total of 40 years in prison the five were exonerated with DNA evidence.

“The tendency to write off teen-age boys because of distrust of their neighborhoods or the color of their skin, to assume that jail is the place for them, has not gone away. Neither, somehow, has Donald Trump.”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five

‘Mr. Trump has also suggested that the teenagers were guilty of something that night because, as he wrote in an editorial for The New York Daily News in 2014, “these young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”

None of the Central Park Five had ever been arrested before, so Mr. Trump’s reference to their pasts has no basis in truth…
So we are left with Mr. Trump’s presumption that because they were black and brown teenagers from Harlem, they must have committed a crime.”

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CL - January 19, 2017

‘The Justice Department sued him and his father in 1973 for discriminating against African Americans who wanted to rent in their buildings. Eventually the Trumps settled, but DOJ had to take them to court again in 1978, alleging that they had reneged on the agreement….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/01/16/daily-202-it-s-bigger-than-john-lewis-trump-s-team-has-been-tone-deaf-on-race/587c2d64e9b69b36fcfeafc8/?utm_term=.992b8de9ae81

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5. Tomboktu - January 18, 2017

Does anybody know if The Blades new album is to be had on CD in Dublin, and if so, where?

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WorldbyStorm - January 18, 2017

Great question. I’d think Tower if anywhere.

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Tomboktu - January 18, 2017

I was in the one over Easons on the way home, and it wasn’t to be seen (mind you, I didn’t ask).

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WorldbyStorm - January 18, 2017

The one on Dawson street is larger, could be there.

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crocodileshoes - January 21, 2017

Bought it in Dawson St Tower today, Saturday, in the process asking the most middle-aged question ever (every word of it): ‘Er, sorry, is the new Blades album out on CD or just, you know, a download or something?’
Hipster behind counter tries not to laugh, like Sally Phillips in ‘Alan Partridge’ .

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6. Tomboktu - January 19, 2017

Bush senior and his wife have gone to extremes to avoid the inauguration. </bad_taste>

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6to5against - January 19, 2017

Speaking of matters of taste, at which point would be appropriate to maybe discuss the somewhat hagiographic coverage of TK Whitaker’s career?

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oconnorlysaght - January 30, 2017

For what it is worth here is a brief obit for TKW which would not have made the Irish Times./Users/user/Desktop/Whitaker.cwk

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7. Michael Carley - January 19, 2017

Irish Times goes the full Enoch, with added pseudo-science of preserving genetic diversity:

Declining European birth rates are starkly illustrated by comparing African and European populations. The population of Europe exceeded the population of Africa until the end of the 20th century, when Africa caught up. Africa’s population will become increasingly larger than Europe’s over the course of the 21st century. Longer-term UN projections predict that, if European fertility rates remain at current low levels, half the European countries would lose at least 95 per cent of their population by 2300. For example, Italy (current fertility rate of 1.4) would only have 1 per cent of its population left. There would be a public outcry if this prospect faced a well-known animal species such as lions.

…

Although immigration buoys up population numbers, providing a convenient supply of workers to maintain the economies of developed countries, immigration cannot prop up the indigenous cultures in the host countries. Unless indigenous fertility rates increase sharply, immigration-induced restructuring of many European nation states can be expected to first dilute and eventually replace indigenous cultures and social structures and experience to date predicts troublesome upheaval to accompany this transition. Surely Europe needs to rethink its attitudes to indigenous fertility rates and immigration policies.

Immigration is now an election issue in many countries. The debate usually revolves around fears that immigrants drive down wages, dilute social welfare and take jobs that would otherwise be available to native nationals. But the deeper questions are: how did we lose the will to replace ourselves and, knowing the demographic consequences of losing that will, can we reclaim it? These vitally important questions call for vibrant public debate.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/let-s-talk-about-the-link-between-immigration-and-low-reproduction-rates-1.2926375

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GW - January 19, 2017

FFS – threatened ‘indigenous cultures’ indeed. Could have come straight from an AfD speech.

Solution: “Strength through Joy” camping trips for teens with sabotaged condoms perhaps? I believe teenage pregnancy used to be a traditional cultural practice, that is sadly on the wane.

I blame immigrants and Putin. Simultaneously.

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Michael Carley - January 19, 2017

This:

There would be a public outcry if this prospect faced a well-known animal species such as lions.

If you can stomach it, a trawl through fascist websites will throw up the argument that racial mixing reduces genetic diversity.

And now the Irish Times is saying it in their `science’ column.

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sonofstan - January 19, 2017

Holy fuck.
Have they lost their minds?

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Michael Carley - January 19, 2017

In the period of a fortnight, they’ve gone from feeble-liberal-cum-voice-of-convention to giving a platform to fascists, to advocating `scientific’ racism.

Lost their minds? What, God help us, could they save?

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sonofstan - January 19, 2017

Fair point

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WorldbyStorm - January 19, 2017

William Reville has form on this sort of stuff. He’s extremely reactionary, for all his scientific expertise seems remarkably swayed by stuff that is anything but, has a very unreconstructed Christian viewpoint and has an entertaining tendency to write articles that are very.. but no. I will say no more. Here are some links to posts on him on the site:

Morality play

Moon: Some astonishing facts

Burning people at the stake is wrong. And horrible.

God, Jesus and the Flood…. The interesting problems of faith, science and creationism in Ireland and the US

Stem Cell research exercises the Irish Times… a lot…

(Science?) cat on a hot tin roof. Heat of tin may not be due to global warming and climate change – so says Dr. William Reville in the Irish Times.

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6to5against - January 19, 2017

I’m pretty sure that they’ve reprinted an article today from last year? Isn’t this the same thing from last May – http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/why-is-europe-losing-the-will-to-breed-1.2644169

Presumably they were so pleased with the results of their Nazi trolling a few weeks ago, that they dug around in the archives to see if they could keep the clicks coming without even having to pay for a new article.

And of course, I’ve just helped them to do so…

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Starkadder - January 21, 2017

Two letters responding to Reville’s article:

“Just so we’re clear, Europeans are not a species; neither are Africans. The premise that a culture can be either “native” or pure is historically blind and can only serve to stoke the kind of intolerance that has become all too familiar.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/birth-rates-immigration-and-culture-1.2945338

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Ed - January 19, 2017

Let me guess, William Reville? He has previous for regurgitating mawkish far-right tropes about the evils of political correctness, cultural Marxism and the remorseless march of castrating feminists through the sacred temples of Irish masculinity.

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8. GW - January 19, 2017

Sinn Fein wants EU “Special Designated Status” for NI.

I confess I don’t know what this means and couldn’t find anything on a brief trawl of EU web sites or Google.

Anyone?

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Joe - January 19, 2017

It’s EU jargonbabble for shithole.

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makedoanmend - January 20, 2017

classhy

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GW - January 20, 2017

Point-scoring aside, here’s what the (PDF warning) SF thinks it means:

– Protection of the Peace Process
– Access to the Single Market (GLWT)
– Remain part of the Common Travel Area
– Maintain EU funding streams (GLWT)
– Workers rights and conditions in EU directives maintained (GLWT)
– Maintenance of EU environmental standards (GLWT)
– Reallocation of British MEP places so RoI gets 3 more

GLWT = Good luck with that.

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Tomboktu - January 21, 2017

“Reallocation of British MEP places so RoI gets 3 more”

I’d have added (GLWT) to that line, too.

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Liberius - January 21, 2017

Assuming* the UK’s 73 MEPs are reallocated then Ireland should gain at the least one, maybe at a push two seats, but three is highly unlikely.

* Germany is already on the maximum of 96 seats so can’t partake in the feeding frenzy, so it would be to their benefit if the frenzy didn’t happen, as is technically possible given that the Lisbon treaty states 751 as a maximum rather than an exact amount.

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9. roddy - January 20, 2017

Aye a shithole that the brits and staters created.

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10. Tomboktu - January 21, 2017

I was looking at the planning documents for the new Romanian Orthodox church on the Western Way in Dublin (http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=2391/16)

There were two objections to two slit windows in a wall that forms a boundary with a neighbour. The windows will be opaque, so the neighbour’s privacy will be respected. The objection is that the windows “will adversely gain a right to light”.

I’m still puzzling the logic of that reason. Not that somebody would be denied light, but somebody else would gain a right to light.

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11. sonofstan - January 21, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/21/northern-ireland-an-uncertain-peace

Matthew Engel (is he still around etc.?) completely unable to avoid the note of condescension as he grandly surveys Portadown. Coming from a country in such an unholy mess as England, it doesn’t play well anymore.

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12. CL - January 21, 2017

” Despite the blockade, the accelerated literacy method developed in Cuba already pulled ten million adults out of illiteracy across the world. Operación Milagro, the program for the treatment of several eye diseases, has improved or given back the sight of seven million people. About 30,000 Cuban doctors are working in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 84,000 medical staff from these countries have been trained in Cuba. So imagine, how we would live without the blockade, how the level of scientific development we have reached could help humankind.”-Aleida Guevara March, daughter of Che Guevara and Aleida March. She is a pediatrician at William Soler Children’s Hospital in Havana.
https://monthlyreview.org/author/aleidaguevaramarch/

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13. roddy - January 22, 2017

A technical question here for WBS. More often than not I agree with comments posted on here but when I press on the “like” star nothing happens.what am I doing wrong?

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14. Starkadder - January 22, 2017

What’s this? Canadians denied entry to US after announcing plans to
attend anti-Trump march:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/20/womens-march-canada-protesters-denied-entry-us

Is he going to call for a second wall, and make Ottawa pay for it?

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CL - January 22, 2017

Trump’ “companies have been cited 24 times since 2005 for failing to pay workers overtime or minimum wage…

Trump offered to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaulted protesters at his rallies, denied making the offer, then made the offer again after a 78-year-old white supporter in North Carolina punched a 26-year-old black protester in the eye and said, “Next time we see him we might have to kill him.” …

a review of the more than 3,500 lawsuits filed against Trump found that he has been accused of stiffing a painter and a dishwasher in Florida, a glass company in New Jersey, dozens of hourly hospitality workers, and some of the lawyers who represented him”
harpers.org/blog/2017/01/tower-of-babble/

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CL - January 22, 2017
15. yourcousin - January 22, 2017

If you can donate, please do. If you can’t please spread the word.

https://www.crowdrise.com/medical-fundraiser-for-iww-and-gdc-member-shot-in-seattle#the-story

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16. CMK - January 23, 2017

Did anyone hear yesterday’s party leaders interview with Gerry Adams on ‘This Week’ by Colm O’Mongáin? It was bizarre to hear an interviewer giving Adams grief over Sean Russell and the actions of the IRA during World War II. Of course, the interview with Enda Kenny will feature extensive probing on the role of the Blueshirts in the Spanish Civil War.

While it was bizarre it is of a part with the clear strategy in RTE to link what they believe are the Left (which incorrectly includes SF in my view) with horror that is Trump and Right ‘populism’. That’s why a minor footnote in history takes up a considerable part of a political interview in 2017: so long as they can shoe-horn in reference to ‘Nazis’, which they did, it is justified as the clear aim is to link the Left with Nazism by any means necessary.

Ditto with the insane press attacks on the the AAA/PBP that appear regularly in the Examiner.

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Dr. X - January 23, 2017

It’s an international strategy by some people. Human Rights Watch issued a thing recently linking Trump with Chavez/Maduro in Venezuela, on the grounds that both were examples of ‘populism’.

Now, I think that’s nonsense, but I can also see how you could make that argument. Where HRW lost me entirely is when they threw a whole other set of more or less obnoxious governments around the world into their populist category, including the EPRDF regime in Ethiopia. That government is dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which started out as followers of Hoxha’s Albanian model, but are now all about the foreign direct investment. All along the way, though, the TPLF have been authoritarian technocrats, who have no truck whatsoever with mobilising the people in any sense that would be consistent with any definition of ‘populism’.

Now, in fairness, HRW do make a lot of good points about human rights violations and the regimes that commit them. But they seem intent on using a definition of ‘populism’ so broad and elastic that it becomes analytically useless and conceptually meaningless.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/dangerous-rise-of-populism

I don’t know why they’re doing that: in the case of the Irish media, it would be down to simple ignorance, but in the case of HRW, who knows.

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CMK - January 23, 2017

Certainly, the agenda appears to be to delegitimise the Left by linking Left forces, however tenuously, with ‘populists’ like Trump et al. A good example was the BBC see photoshopping Jeremy Corbyn with a Trump style red base ball cap that read ‘Make Britain Great Again.’

Incidentally, I read Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow’ over Christmas (it is highly recommended) and if HRW wanted to do some good closer to home they would be campaigning to change US drug laws and the disenfranchisement of ‘felons’ who are overwhelmingly African-American. If they Left Venezuela and Cuba alone for a few years and turned their fire on the US they might actually do some good!

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Ed - January 23, 2017

The most infuriating thing about those Trump/Chavez comparisons is that the real parallel is between Trump and the Venezuelan opposition (or between Trump and Alvaro Uribe – another populist authoritarian strongman who somehow never makes the list alongside Putin, Erdogan and the like). Like Trump, the opposition leaders in Venezuela refused to accept the validity of any election result that went against them; every time they lost an election or a referendum, they made groundless claims of massive electoral fraud, with the subtext that too many dark-skinned people had voted for the poll to be legitimate. Unlike Trump’s claims about ‘voter fraud’, those ridiculous allegations were treated with the utmost seriousness by the western media. The opposition leaders in Venezuela hailed Trump’s victory because they recognized a fellow soldier when they saw him.

HRW’s record when it comes to Latin America is really appalling, and has been getting steadily worse. The lowest point yet came a couple of months ago when they campaigned alongside Alvaro Uribe and the Colombian far right against the peace agreement negotiated between Santos and the FARC; the final outcome was so narrow that HRW’s intervention could have made a real difference. Ken Roth spent the next few days gloating about the referendum result and parroting the lines of the Uribista far right (asking the Colombian government would make concessions to the FARC when they had a ‘stronger army’; Roth knows very well that the Colombian army has an appalling record of abuses, murdering thousands of civilians and presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat, but that was the force he was keen to rely on to deliver ‘peace’ in Colombia).

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17. roddy - January 23, 2017

Unionists up here were badly wrongfooted at a council meeting up here when they tried to bring up WW2 against a SF councillor (now my local MLA) .He matter of factly outlined his father’s WW2 experiences fighting the Nazis throughout Europe and enquired if their families had similar experiences.Surprisingly he was met witha stunned silence as their relatives prefered to confine their military “action” to the B specials and home guard!

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CMK - January 23, 2017

There is an interesting piece in Brian Girvin’s ‘The Emergency’ about disquiet among the Unionist establishment during WW2 when the recruitment figures showed that the ‘loyal’ population were a bit slow in signing up but the other side were disproportionately represented.

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GW - January 23, 2017

Interesting – and it figures.

Non-Unionists would have had less to loose owning less land, suffering worse unemployment and lower average wages. A set of circumstances that always worked well as a recruiting sergeant.

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fergal - January 23, 2017

Wasn’t there some story about Churchill being displeased about unionist recruitment figures? Did he not refer to them as ‘corner boys’? Apparently the numbers were much much lower than world war one as the memory of the Somme wasn’t all flags and buntings but also included large dollops of blood and death..

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18. sonofstan - January 23, 2017

Might be of interest – a German view on our corporation tax regime

Click to access p_imk_wp_175_2017.pdf

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GW - January 23, 2017

Nice spot SoS.

From the conclusion:

Not only GDP, also GNI and employment (in persons), improved quicker than in other crisis countries. This improvement is not necessarily beneficial to Irish citizens: Employment is yet to reach pre-crisis levels. Recovery seems to have come at the cost of suppressed wage growth, leading to an impressive decrease in the wage share. This result holds when measuring the wage share based on GDP as well as GNI.

This result puts the Irish role as a blueprint for other countries into question. Ireland’s strategy of attracting foreign owned companies by low corporate taxation rates can be seen as a beggar-thy-neighbour strategy, increasing downward competition for taxation in the EU.

The strategy is not even clearly positive for Irish citizens, at least not for those relying on wage income. Therefore, it is surprising that the government seems to be willing to continue to compete for foreign owned companies by low corporate taxation rates, as a series of publications of the Department of Finance (2014) seems to indicate as well as the discussion of having to accept tax payments of Apple.

Schäuble now has ‘Patent Box’ / ‘Intellectual property’ corporate tax evasion scams in his sights. It’s really time to start thinking about domestic economic development and stimulus – FDI is getting more an more dodgy as a ‘strategy.

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19. sonofstan - January 23, 2017

The Guardian describes Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Foster as coming from ‘radically different’ backgrounds. Because one is Fermanagh and the other Tyrone?

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20. Joe - January 23, 2017

Two thoughts. 1. It was a typo. They meant ‘racially different’. 2. Here’s lyrics and chords from the Rollickin Boys of Tandragee which might explain what the Grauniad was getting at:
“The (Am)oul jaunting car is the elegant joult
And (G)Derry’s the place that is famed for the hoult
A(Am)mong the green bushes that grow in Tyrone
And (G)County Fermanagh for (Am)muscle and bone –Am-Am
For (Am)feasting and barney and fun at the fair
There’s (G)none to compare with the Rakes of Kildare
Green (Am)Erin my country’s the gem of the see
But the (G)gem of oul Ireland is (Am)Tandragee”

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21. CL - January 24, 2017

‘President Trump met with a dozen union leaders and members Monday afternoon at the White House…

Trump started the meeting with a reference to an executive order he had signed hours earlier: scrapping the United States’ participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership…
His audience responded with applause. They came from groups across the country representing carpenters, construction workers, bus drivers and welders.’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/23/donald-trump-tells-union-leaders-he-wants-to-hire-americans-to-rebuild-america/?utm_term=.e5298a0192d5

‘Labor leaders praised Donald Trump for an “excellent meeting”
‘Trump was joined by North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey;, Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan;, SMART sheet metal workers’ union President Joseph Sellers; United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Doug McCarron and United Association President Mark McManus, among others.’
http://nypost.com/2017/01/23/trump-talks-free-trade-in-first-meeting-with-labor-leaders/

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yourcousin - January 24, 2017

Spent my entire adult career under Doug McCarron’s “leadership”. The man singlehandedly invented corporate unionism. Unfortunately this does not surprise me.

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sonofstan - January 24, 2017

” North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey;, Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan;, SMART sheet metal workers’ union President Joseph Sellers; United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Doug McCarron and United Association President Mark McManus, among others.’”

That’s a lot of Irish sounding names…..

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22. carpenter bee - December 15, 2018

Round Carpenter Pencils

What you want to say – 18th January, Week 3, 2017 | The Cedar Lounge Revolution

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