The Cedar Lounge Revolution

The badante (live-in-home carer) system in Italy January 31, 2023

A very interesting post on Tomás Ó Flaharta which notes:

Dave Kellaway’s description [and affectionate tribute to his mother in law] of the Italian state’s support system enabling unhealthy older people to finish their lives at home will interest readers in Ireland – where a similar system could easily be established. 

A snapshot of Britain January 31, 2023

Thought this illuminating. From YouGov and a poll on striking Amazon workers. Supporting them 60%, opposing them 22%. 

Unsurprisingly Labour voters overwhelmingly support them (though it’s a wonder who the 4% are and 6% who strongly or somewhat respectively oppose them). Liberal Democrats are somewhat less effusive, but still overall strongly or somewhat support them. Let’s ignore the Tories.

More interesting again are the Remain/Leave divisions on the issue. 28% of that latter cohort somewhat or strongly oppose. 52% somewhat or strongly support. Remain 13% somewhat or strongly oppose as against 72%. Now, long stated here that once the referendum was passed there was no point in a Remain position, and I’d be the last to see it as a token of unalloyed progressivism, but I thought this about an actual dispute was quite useful in terms of determining the strength of attitudes within that cohort. 

Btw, there’s some hilarious (deliberate? trolling?) misunderstanding of polling and how it is carried out on the part of some tweeting in response to the poll and disbelieving that there’s majority support for the strikers.  

This definitely isn’t a surprise January 31, 2023

From the IT yesterday:

The Green Party would be open to entering a coalition with Sinn Féin if the party started taking environmental issues “seriously”, party leader Eamon Ryan has said.

The Dublin Bay South TD said the Greens would work with “all parties” in the future when it came to tackling the climate and environmental crisis.

Asked if he would consider forming a future government with Sinn Féin the Green Party leader did not rule it out.

“I’ve always said that the scale of change needed on the environmental side and the urgency means that we can’t sit back and wait for the ideal partners and the ideal opportunity to go into government,” Mr Ryan told RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week.

It makes electoral sense for Ryan to state he’s open to such a coalition. With SF riding high in the polls he needs to attract transfers from across the political spectrum. Whether this works is a different matter.

That said, he’s not wrong in pointing to the gap in SF policies in relation to the environment.

The Green Party leader added that, in such a scenario, Sinn Féin would have to “change” on the environment.

“They have to start taking the environmental agenda seriously, and show the ambition and the scale of response, and the funding and the resources that need to go with that in their policy approach,” Mr Ryan said.

“So we would enter any such negotiations with absolutely honest respect to all parties, respecting their mandate, but also holding a line.”

Mr Ryan said politics could not “delay” when it came to tackling climate change. “You can’t put off the environment, you can’t put it down as some kind of nice tick-box greenwashing option, it has to be real.”

But given he’s in coalition with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (and perhaps, for all its woes, not a coalition as loathed as the last FF administration of the late 2000), he can afford to say come one come all should the chips fall a certain way in two years’ time. 

Is this a surprise? January 30, 2023

The IT is a bit breathless with the following news this morning:

Sinn Féin would be the strongest party in a united Ireland, according to new research which assesses the attitude of voters in Northern Ireland to the parties in the Republic and vice versa.

Already the most popular party in both jurisdictions, Sinn Féin’s cross-Border presence would be a significant advantage in a united Ireland, whereas the other parties – in both North and South – would struggle to appeal to the new voters that became available to them after unification.

Indeed this feels like a bit of stretch:

The research finds that Sinn Féin is best placed to navigate the politics of a united Ireland, were that to happen in the future. It is the only party that resonates with voters on both sides of the Border and is well-placed to win additional support.

Is that a bit intangible? Perhaps it might win additional support but the question would be why if it is unable to win that support already. 

In any event, surely this is hardly unsurprising given that in polling SF is so buoyant North and South. But the complexities of the situation still impinge. SF is popular in Northern Ireland within one part of a divided political environment. SF is the party with the largest polling support albeit still well below 40% in the Republic. That’s not hegemonic support, although in fairness the article doesn’t claim that it is. But well before we arrived at a united Ireland there’d be many turns in the road. The situation in 2023 is one thing. In 2031? Or 2040? Where will we stand then.

Perhaps a more immediate question is one that surely troubles quite a few, what is the situation with respect to the political climate on the island if and when Sinn Féin becomes the governing party in the Republic? How will that impact on perceptions of unity in this states and in the North? 

One big (teaching) union? January 30, 2023

Anyone read these reports?

Two of the country’s leading trade unions could be about to join forces after sources in both the ASTI and TUI teacher unions have confirmed that they are discussing a possible merger. It is understood senior representatives from the two unions met earlier this week and agreed to proceed with talks about coming together. Informal discussions have been ongoing for a number of months, according to one source.

And:

The two unions have been at loggerheads in recent years, as they adopted different stances on issues such as junior cycle reform, and amid acrimonious accusations of the poaching of members.

Confirmation of talks follows a report in Industrial Relations News that a merger of the two unions has been proposed, in the context of allocating funds due to teachers under the Building Momentum pay agreement.

What do people think?

Left Archive: Armagh/H-Block News, Drumcondra/Whitehall Action Group, Vol 1. No. 5, Sept 19 1981 January 30, 2023

Please click here to go the Left Archive.

To download the above please click on the following link.

This document issued by Drumcondra/Whitehall Action Group, a section of the Armagh/H-Block Action Group, which was associated with the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist) and where the publications of the Action Group were often interpolated with CPI (M-L) publications, is of some interest.

The piece exhorting readers to join the Group notes that:

We are a non-party political group campaigning to secure the five demands of the H-BLock and Armagh prisoners. The purpose of this bulletin is to provide a counter to the decent and lying propaganda being organised by the state on the H-Block issue. It is also produced to answer the questions that many people have on the issue. We encourage people to contribute to the bulletin, both financially and by sending in comments questions and contributing articles cartoons etc.

The contents covers a range of issues relating to Armagh and H-Block including the arrest of nineteen people after a demonstration at the British Embassy the previous week. There is also a piece on ‘Support in Britain’ growing for the campaign. There is an update on news from the hunger strikes. And there’s a report on a march against the British Military Attaché in Dublin held in Dun Laoghaire.

How and where do people learn about gigs these days? January 29, 2023

This question is prompted by the following question put to me:

Cedar Lounge CLR social meet February 1st January 29, 2023

Just a reminder that the CLR social committee is holding a social meet that evening, same place as last time, around 6 onwards.

Sunday and other stupid statements this week… January 29, 2023

All examples welcome – but the regulars just keep cropping up.

Does this sound even slightly plausible?

While the nature and scale of the abuse [against politicians] has been fanned by the rise of social media, politicians and the mainstream media need to look at their own behaviour and reflect on how the tone of political debate feeds into the wider public attitudes, encouraging not only cynicism but even violent behaviour towards our public representatives.

‘We’ are at fault again. Finn McRedmond thinks that possible labelling of wine for health concerns is:

a joyless policy… When did we become such puritans? It is right to mount some pushback to the public health hall-monitors seemingly hell bent on creeping into every crevice of society. And this remains true irrespective of the rage levels of Italian farmers (although, as a rule, it’s not a fight I would be confident of winning).

It appears to have escaped her attention that there’s already labelling on many wine bottles about similar concerns. In any case interesting definition of puritanism. 

Someone in the SBP thinks that the following is a feasible route for the Coalition to be re-elected:

There will undoubtedly be very compelling messages to deliver at that time, with a government that can claim credit for steering the ship through the Covid pandemic, dealing with the challenging global environment arising from war in Ukraine, delivering full employment and maintaining growth as our trading partners have entered recession.

The flip side of this messaging will, of course, be the continued chaos in our failing health system and the ongoing housing crisis. Since neither problem is likely to be solved by 2025, the outgoing government will choose to focus on its positive economic achievements.

All of this points to an early winter 2024 election, in which government TDs will hope voters are happy enough with some extra cash in their pocket not think too deeply about the lack of housing and hospital beds.

Latest SBP/RedC opinion poll January 28, 2023

Sinn Féin up 2% to 33%, Fine Gael 21% down 3%, Fianna Fáil unchanged at 15%, Independents similar unchanged at 11%, Social Democrats up 2% to 6%, GP 4% which is down 1%, the LP is at 4% and no change, PBP-SOL is 3% and no change and Aontú is at 2%.

The (slight) forward march of Fine Gael halted! Fianna Fáil at a dismal rating. The rest more or less where they were. No great change really. Or signs that the Budget’s positive(ish) impacts for the Government are beginning to wear off?