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What you want to say – 5th April, Week 14, 2017 April 5, 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. Starkadder - April 5, 2017

“The Scum” denounces Spain on the same front page offering holidays there:
http://www.thecanary.co/2017/04/04/sun-tries-stick-spain-falls-flat-jacksie-tweets/

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GW - April 5, 2017

Yea and?

Consistency is only something rootless cosmopolitan snowflake intellectual care about.

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2. ewolc - April 5, 2017
Jim Monaghan - April 5, 2017

“CEU is funded by Hungarian-American hedge-fund entrepreneur and philanthropist George Soros. For decades, Soros has been a lightning rod for conservative critics in Europe as well as the US for supporting liberal causes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Soros of orchestrating the “colour revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine over the last decade. And, in the past few years, the Hungarian government has denounced NGOs funded by Soros for “illegitimately” influencing political life.”

The Red Brown alliance. I wonder where much of our Left stands on the above.

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Starkadder - April 5, 2017

I don’t have much sympathy for Soros-I consider him just another greedy businessman with a side-line in funding centrist philanthropy.

Nevertheless, I find the fact the right-wing conspiracy theorists think he is behind everything to be amusing (when I was on an anti-Trump march, the man next to me joked “No sign of any of that Soros money!”).

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WorldbyStorm - April 5, 2017

He’s a weird one. It would be useful to understand his motivations. But I agree, the idea he’s pulling all these strings. It’s laughable.

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GW - April 6, 2017

I would put Soros in the basket of smart capitalists who realise that it needs to change if it is to survive and remain compatible with some form of liberalish sort-of democracy.

The right hate him because they want to move straight to a more authoritarian form of capitalist governance.

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Dr. X - April 7, 2017

Dr. Soros was always good to me.

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3. GW - April 5, 2017

Ireland still officially a top priority in the EU Parliament debate about Brexit:

Ireland got prominent mention in the Guy Verhofstadt press conference after the vote and a promise that there will be no hard border will be a boon to border businesses desperately worried about their future.

Asked by an RTE reporter how difficult it would be to achieve the desire for no border controls, Verhofstadt said: “It will be very difficult and it will be very high on the priority list: no hard border, respect in all its aspects of the Good Friday agreement.”

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WorldbyStorm - April 5, 2017

Interesting.

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4. sonofstan - April 6, 2017

I tend to nerd out on this stuff:

Click to access prCensussummarypart1.pdf

Under 80% of population now ticks ‘catholic’, 10% ‘no religion’
Foreign born proportion of the population falls slightly but total number is up.
French second most spoken other language after Polish.

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

“The eastern sea board counties around Dublin had
the highest percentage of non-Catholics, with the
percentages declining as you move west.
Three counties had more than 1 in 3 of the population as
non-Catholic, namely Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire and
Galway City. Tipperary has the lowest percentage at
12.9 per cent “

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Liberius - April 6, 2017

The results for French and Russian are noteworthy. Of those who spoke French at home 75.1 per cent were Irish nationals, only 16.2 per cent were French nationals while 3.7 per cent were of African nationality.

From page 54; Isn’t that question more about actual in use home languages rather than ones you can speak? If so they’ll need to redesign the question.

Click to access Census_2016_Summary_Results_Part_1_Full.pdf

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5. roddy - April 6, 2017

I would’nt put too much political emphasis on the “non Catholic” thing.I would doubt very much it has anything to do with socialism.In working class areas the vast majority of people who never darken a church door or follow the church teachings would still regard themselves as “catholic” The reference to Dunlaoghaire and to some extent Galway city would be reflecting a high concentration of bourgeois liberals.Likewise south Dublin.

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Liberius - April 6, 2017

It is projected that three-quarters of priests will be over 60 by 2030.

Weekly Mass attendance levels in Dublin are currently put at 20-22 per cent (of the population), while being as low as 2-3 per cent in some working-class parishes.

That doesn’t line up with your prejudices roddy, and this is from a report commissioned by the priests themselves.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/mass-attendance-in-dublin-to-drop-by-one-third-by-2030-1.2504351

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

It doesn’t have anything to do with socialism. It’s interesting that we’re becoming less afraid to announce that were not religious is all. And Dun Laoghaire is not as bourgeois as painted by any means (nor is Galway). There has almost always been a left seat there for a start.
@ Liberius – I agree, the question is weird. And the Irish language stats indicate aspiration above actuality as usual.

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6to5against - April 6, 2017

I entered ‘catholic’ on the previous census. That is my background and a key part of my cultural upbringing. It seemed reasonable to acknowledge that. But as the figures were increasingly used in the interim to justify the church dominance of schooling and healthcare, I ticked ‘no religion’ this time.

I haven’t changed, but the context has.

I suspect something similar is in play with others, and hence the change from 2011.

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

That’s interesting – I’ve always ticked ‘no religion’ but this time, had I been in the country, I might have ticked ‘cultural catholic’ had there been such thing, since I’ve come more and more to understand myself that way, and also to be less dogmatic about the whole thing.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

Me too as it happens SoS.

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GW - April 6, 2017

I hear stories of priests being dragged back from retirement for the smaller parishes and just not being able to cope.

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6to5against - April 6, 2017

I was at a confirmation last week and the priest made a big speech about encouraging people to join the priesthood. Probably one of the few congregations he gets all year that’s both full and dominated by young people.

Which is presumably why he chose that occasion, and also why it was a waste of time.

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6to5against - April 6, 2017

And linked to that, now that I think of it is the church either directly or indirectly controls a large number of appointments to the boards of management of Irish schools and Irish hospitals. As the number of priests declines, and as the number of lay people actively involved in church politics falls increasingly close to zero, who is going to end up on these boards?

I fear that inside a few years there will be a very small number of extreme right wing Catholics in control of many state-funded institutions.

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GW - April 6, 2017

Yep – that’s a real and imminent danger.

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6. roddy - April 6, 2017

Liberius,I said that people in working class areas where church attendance is miniscule still regard themselves as “catholic”. It has nothing to do with “my prejudices” .It is fact and also if I have to choose between these people and their “superstition” and the likes of a count like Ruairi Quinn,I know whose side I’ll be on.

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Liberius - April 6, 2017

If that were the case, wouldn’t the age differences be a little less pronounced. It’s an age thing with codgers like yourself being out of line with younger generations.

From page 73;

As clearly illustrated, those with no religion were under-represented in the age groups 0-19 compared with the
general population, and among those aged 50 and over. The age group 20-39 accounts for 28 per cent of the general population but 45 per cent of those with no religion fall into this age bracket.

And, who cares about Quinn? It’s not package deal where you discover reason and get Ruiari Quinn for free.

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RosencrantzisDead - April 6, 2017

Why would working class people who identify as ‘catholic’ tell the census they are ‘non religious’? Is there rumour of a tithe being reintroduced or something?

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6to5against - April 6, 2017

I think many of us choose to define our religious beliefs on our own terms. As I said above, there are situations where I would regard myself as Catholic and situations where I wouldn’t. I think many people in working class communities and elsewhere are happy to baptise children, get married and bury their dead within the catholic church and yet feel no allegiance to catholic dogma.

As was well beaten into me in my youth, once you’re baptised you’re a member of the church whether you like it or not. This works both ways. Even those of us who would be regarded as hopelessly lost by the church have to be accepted by them.

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6to5against - April 6, 2017

To continue to harp on about this, am I the only one here who is not a religious believer but who instinctively supports a catholic country against a protestant one when it comes to football?

Maybe that’s all that is meant by many when they tick the ‘catholic’ box.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

I think your point 6to5against re defining our religious beliefs on our own terms resonates strongly with me. People, in my experience, swim in and out of this in a way that simple categorisation can’t capture. And yes, people can consider themselves ‘catholic’ in numerous ways, some of which seem (and perhaps are) contradictory.

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7. sonofstan - April 6, 2017

Since I started this, I guess I should clarify why I was interested:I’ve no issue with people deciding to be catholic as little or as often as it suits them. Nor do I think that ticking the ‘no religion’ box is necessarily a sign of intelligence, rationality or anything else.
I just find it interesting that fewer people do identify as catholic and this has political implications – regarding school patronage, hospitals etc.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

That last point is very important. One real issue I have at the moment is the way that the social mix of the old NS’s (and by extension on into second level) is being broken up as the system fragments with significant class implications I fear down the line. I’m not for a moment arguing for a return to the universal catholicism of them, but instead that a single secular school form at all levels would be optimal in terms of class outcomes.

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Aonrud ⚘ - April 6, 2017

Ticking that census box is answering two different questions really. Clearly for some it’s an indication of identity (“cultural catholic” as 6to5against mentioned) and for others of belief system. And even in that latter are the related but separate matters of institutional affiliation or personal belief.

I have to admit, the catholic church is an organisation I look forward to seeing collapse, but if that 78% figure genuinely reflected support for the catholic church, I’ve no interest in picking on other people’s beliefs. But I think it’s fairly unlikely that it does, certainly beyond a fairly weak cultural attachment for many.

I’m not sure how feasibly the question could be asked, but I’d love to see some separation between affiliation or support for the institutions of the catholic church and the necessarily more nebulous and vague matter of culture and group identity. Because, as you point out, whether true or not, the catholic church can point to that figure of 78% and claim they have the support of the vast majority of the population, and use that to justify their continued insidious influence in the state.

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Liberius - April 6, 2017

I’m not for a moment arguing for a return to the universal catholicism of them, but instead that a single secular school form at all levels would be optimal in terms of class outcomes.

It’s not just about class though, Ireland still has a very heavily segregated system as far as gender is concerned as well, so an integrated single system would get rid of that element as well as limiting the class outcomes and removing the religious segregation. I can’t see any down sides to that arrangement, although no doubt somebody will come up with a reason to kick the idea to death.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

Yes, gender, should have made that clear but I’d be 100% in favour of integrated.

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8. RosencrantzisDead - April 6, 2017

This piece by James Meek in the London Review of Books is really quite good. It covers everything from Brexit to EU subsidies to neo-colonialism.

‘They didn’t know the mentality of the Somerdale workers,’ Amoree Radford said. ‘They would have worked to the death for the factory, but the directors didn’t know that.’ She’d worked there for ten years and her daughter Jade and husband Les still had jobs there when the news came. Dave Silsbury, a Unite official at the factory, worked there for 34 years. His father had worked there; he, his brothers, his daughter and his son-in-law were employed there when it shut. ‘Cadbury was all we knew,’ he said. ‘We were institutionalised.’ He was one of the last workers to leave, haunting its near deserted production halls, packing up for the auctioneers before the final shutdown in March 2011. By that time, the production lines had been stopped, one by one, dismantled and shipped off. The Mini Eggs production line was trucked the thousand miles to the new factory in the village of Skarbimierz in February 2010.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

Great piece.

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9. Gerryboy - April 6, 2017

Two big percentage increases in affiliation to minority religions are Muslims and African Apostolic. Probably not much support for the ‘secular agenda’ from that quarter. Decline in formal religious affiliation doesn’t mean a rise in support for left-of-centre politics. Look at England – a largely agnostic society and also conservative with a lower case ‘c’. I note that C of I numbers have shrunk fractionally, along with Presbyterian. Two questions I’d like philosophers and sociologists to probe as part of a long-term project are (a) What makes the Irish tick? and (b) What is the Irish Dream?

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

“Decline in formal religious affiliation doesn’t mean a rise in support for left-of-centre politics.” Indeed, and that ties in in a way with my comment just above to SoS.

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10. Aonrud ⚘ - April 6, 2017

On the subject of the census results, the summary report’s section on marriage seems to use the word ‘single’ throughout rather than ‘unmarried’. Must tell my partner we’re single 😉

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

There’s a cohabiting stat somewhere…

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Aonrud ⚘ - April 6, 2017

I figured there must be an option for that somewhere, but in terms of marital status the report seems to elide single and unmarried.

Like this graph:

Doesn’t matter, but I would have thought they’d be more cautious around language, since people are quick to offense. Another page uses sex and gender interchangeably. Again, no big deal, but someone will pick that up.

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

i’m offended by all the exclamation marks! It’s a fact!

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11. sonofstan - April 6, 2017

On another point, after Luxembourg and Switzerland, we have the next highest proportion of foreign born residents of any country in Europe. At 17.3% it’s 4 points higher than the US, though lower than Canada, Australia and NZ.

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alanmyler - April 6, 2017

Well I’m one of those. I suspect a lot of those were born in Britain to Irish parents, such as myself, what with emigration having been a constant in this country over past decades. It would be interesting to see the breakdown though. I did read somewhere that there are more Polish speakers than Irish speakers, but that’s not too surprising either.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

I was born to Irish and English parents in London.

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sonofstan - April 6, 2017

Yes of course. I think, for example, i know more irish people living in ireland that were born in Birmingham alone than I do people from Limerick. Even that though points to a diversity of experience and origin for such a small population.

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WorldbyStorm - April 6, 2017

Yeah, that’s an interesting point. perhaps a function of living in Dublin though too?

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12. 6to5against - April 6, 2017

74% have been to a doctor in the last year? And 6.2 visits a year?

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Tomboktu - April 7, 2017

Skewed by older and iller patients. (I think my mother sees the GP once a month.)

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13. CL - April 7, 2017

“On another point, after Luxembourg and Switzerland, we have the next highest proportion of foreign born residents of any country in Europe. At 17.3% it’s 4 points higher than the US, though lower than Canada, Australia and NZ.” (SOS above)

That’s good news culturally.

“Culture is born out of exchanges and thrives on difference….. The death of culture lies in self-centredness, self-sufficiency and isolation.”- Simon Leys (quoted by Julian Barnes)
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n08/julian-barnes/diary

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14. Tomboktu - April 8, 2017

I see there was a reminder in the Journal this week that we don’t actually have a positive right to strike under Irish law. Technically, many of the things that occur in a strike are illegal: withdrawal of labour is a breach of contract, for example. Instead, our industrial relations law provides that if certain conditions are met, then we are given immunity from the legal consequences.

http://www.thejournal.ie/secondary-picketing-ireland-law-facts-3323844-Apr2017/

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