Back to the office… again January 31, 2024
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.22 comments
A friend was telling me how his company recently announced that two days per week in the office are now mandatory. It didn’t really bother him as he is Dublin based and goes in a few days a week anyway. However he did think of some co-workers that were based in Longford, Galway , Kerry etc who tend to come up to the office maybe once a month. Apparently Top management are constants in the Office but beyond that the office isn’t regularly populated.
The cynic in my friend thought it was ,in part, a measure to encourage staff to leave, change job etc without having to pay redundancy. I’d imagine many contracts weren’t actually changed during covid to allow for permanent remote working.
Left Conservatives? Well that’s not entirely unfamiliar here… January 31, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.5 comments
Germany’s favourite “firebrand politician”, Sahra Wagenknecht, has finally launched her long-awaited new party, the awkwardly named Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – Reason and Fairness. After years of speculation, the German and some of the international media went into overdrive, predicting that the “leftwing conservative” party (Wagenknecht talks about combining job security, higher wages and generous benefits with a restrictive immigration and asylum policy) would “shake up” the German party system and “could eat into the far right’s support”.
Some on the left might find the branding of a ‘left’ party focused around an individual a little… curious. Problematic even. But, your mileage may vary. Note the focus on immigration.
But as Muddle points out that may not function in the way Wagenknecht et al hope.
Probably most importantly, there is significant electoral potential for this new party. In September 2023, a poll found that one in five Germans “could imagine” voting for the (not yet founded) party. In fact, as the German political scientist Sarah Wagner recently argued, a significant part of the German electorate combines leftwing economic views with rightwing cultural views, but no German party offers such a “leftwing authoritarian” (or “leftwing conservative”) programme. Unlike other far-right parties in western Europe, such as the French National Rally (RN) or the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the AfD has not (yet) made the switch from a pro-market to a welfare chauvinist agenda.
But, although Wagner and her colleagues found that Wagenknecht “has the ability to build bridges between left and right”, they were less sure “whether current AfD voters would be willing to turn their backs on the AfD and vote for a Wagenknecht party instead”. Leaving aside that leftwing authoritarians tend to be less likely to vote, they also tend to vote rightwing more often than leftwing, particularly when cultural issues such as immigration dominate the political agenda, as they have been doing for most of the 21st century so far.
And worse:
And given that such issues continue to dominate, Wagenknecht’s “anti-immigrant” and “anti-woke” discourse will only strengthen the mainstreaming of far-right talking points. In most cases, this leads to more, not less, electoral support for the far right – as in the the most recent Dutch elections, in November 2023. The Dutch Socialist party (SP) campaigned on an “old left” platform combiningtraditional leftwing economic positions, for example on healthcare, with demands for a temporary stop on migrant workers anda popular leader, Lilian Marijnissen,attacking “identity politics”. Butit lost yet again, while the (combined) far right won a postwar record number of votes. In some countries this “leftwing conservative” approach has led to a fall in far-right support: for example, it benefited the Danish Social Democrats. But even this was mostly because of internal problems in the far-right party, and eventually gave way to a successful new Danish anti-immigrant party.
To be honest we in Ireland have had experience of all this. Parties of the right that are profoundly socially and economically conservative who offer a patina of some economic populism or even leftism. What social democracy we have in this state is in spite rather than because of their ideologies – simply because private capital couldn’t provide the necessary. How else to explain the fact we have a welfare system, broadly speaking public (albeit with a religious inflection) education, a two-tier public-part private health system and on and on and on and on. Granted other states have arrived at their social and economic dispensation through a process of accrual or default or provision in the absence of other alternatives but here we have never had a left-led, let alone left, government and yet those protections do exist albeit patchily and imperfectly in many areas (consider special needs education and care for children as one where resources are partial to put it kindly).
And our parties of the right have tilted left, somewhat, when it suited them. As with social housing provision in the 1950s and 1960s and through into the 1970s. Credit them with housing tens of thousands and more. Of course the current situation is one where ideologically they remain averse to the point of insanity to public provision. And yet they remain in government.
So rather as Muddle notes above, in Europe anti-immigrant parties of the hard and far right have offered the transition to a sort of faux ‘left’ conservatism. And that makes sense, they are – after all, attempting to widen their appeal and pull in more voters, particularly those of the parties that have been obstacles to their electoral progress, those being parties of the left (not that those parties have always covered themselves in glory on issues around immigration). The Wagenknecht project is unusual only in that it comes from the left of left. But form – one suspects – follows function. And oddly, and this is often forgotten, we already have a splinter from a larger left political party.
It’s called Aontú! Here’s their Workers’ Rights policies:
Committed to fair pay for fair work to allow fair living conditions
Workplace Justice
Aontú is committed to justice in the workplace and the rights of all workers on the island of Ireland to get fair pay for fair work to allow fair living conditions. We affirm the dignity of work and the right of workers to equitable pay and working environment.
Low pay and precarious work affects the lives of many workers across the island of Ireland. In many sectors and firms workers are treated without respect and with limited guarantees to paid hours. Recent legislative provisions on zero-hour contracts and banded hours in the South are welcome, however it remains to be seen how these provisions will be applied in practice and what loop holes will appear.
We need a strong and well-resourced agency to inspect compliance with labour legislation including practices in relation to minimum pay, contract work and rights to parental leave and sick pay.
Zero hour contracts should be outlawed once and for all across the whole island of Ireland with no opt outs by employers.
Exploitive work such as ‘bogus self-employment’ where workers are forced by employers to declare themselves as self-employed in order for the employers to avoid tax and PRSI needs to be rooted out. This type of exploitation also results in workers being denied rights and safeguards that should go with their contract, as well as the State losing out on millions in tax.
The national minimum wage must be sufficient to lift the 100,000 working poor out of poverty. The living wage in Ireland is calculated as EUR11.90 per hour whereas the current minimum wage for those over 20 years old is EUR9.80. A ‘living wage’ is what is deemed the necessary earnings to allow the average person to achieve a minimum acceptable standard of living. The minimum wage should reflect the living wage, albeit with separate formulae for the Greater Dublin Area and the rest of the island given the massive differences in cost of living.
Availing of work, education or training should be a right for all, worker and non-worker alike regardless of socio economic background, location, age or gender. Lifelong learning needs to be encouraged both for the benefit of the economy and society as a whole. Finland is a good case study for this, where one in five adults are engaged in self-motivated study at any one time. Implementation of a ‘Job or Training’ guarantee should start with persons under 25 and be extended gradually to the entire workforce.
A right to decent income during retirement must be established. While progress has been made over recent decades, many workers are extremely vulnerable to losing pension rights due to ever changing market conditions. The current pensions structure also means that state contributions rather than residency are the primary driver behind pension payments. The way to secure pensions is to link employee, employer and government contributions as part of a reformed social insurance model based on residency. All residents of pensionable age should receive a full state pension rather than partial payments. Like the minimum wage and the living wage; the minimum pension needs to reflect a living pension. No person in Ireland should be choosing between food and heat.
To prevent exploitation, there must be protections put in place and penalties for employers who sack domestic employees to be replaced with workers from abroad for slave wages.
It is vital that workers have access to a range of services and supports including payment during periods of sickness, parental leave and study leave. We should be moving towards best practice in Scandinavian countries.
Finally, it is imperative on this centenary of the First Dáil that workers have an unambiguous right to collective bargaining and trade union membership across the whole island. A constitutional referendum should be held to enshrine this right in Bunreacht na hÉireann.
Some good stuff in there. You could imagine they’d wind up on economic/workers rights policy somewhere about traditional social democracy – though I do like the reference to a referendum on the right to collective bargaining etc. That’d be useful.
Granted their views on abortion wouldn’t endear themselves to some, and while their immigration policy makes some reasonable points I’d imagine few of us would be entirely on board.
But isn’t that what left conservatism is – one doesn’t get to determine the ‘good’ parts from the not so good parts. And if it looks better to some from a distance than when it is up front and immediate, well, perhaps that’s a function of its intrinsic nature rather than proximity. Muddle’s point about parties of the left who adopt such positions channelling hard and far-right discourse into the mainstream has the ring of truth too. Really, one could argue that in any party that claims to be left (or leftish) and conservative it is always the conservative part that wins out. There’s also this tantalising piece of evidence from polling:
But, although Wagner and her colleagues found that Wagenknecht “has the ability to build bridges between left and right”, they were less sure “whether current AfD voters would be willing to turn their backs on the AfD and vote for a Wagenknecht party instead”. Leaving aside that leftwing authoritarians tend to be less likely to vote, they also tend to vote rightwing more often than leftwing, particularly when cultural issues such as immigration dominate the political agenda, as they have been doing for most of the 21st century so far.
And in terms of actual polling – this looks decidedly mixed.
Significant changes, and a sight unseen deal… January 31, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.3 comments
As the dust settles over the DUP’s agreement to re-enter the institutions, contingent upon delivery of agreements made with the British government, suddenly attention turns to just what those agreements are.
The government here claimed initially it hadn’t had sight of the deal.
Mr Varadkar welcomed the DUP move and said while there have been consultations between the European Commission and the Irish and British governments over the past few months, he has not seen the fine detail of what has been agreed.
“Obviously we’ll need to see it and be confident that it doesn’t have any negative consequences for the Windsor framework or the Good Friday Agreement, I don’t anticipate that it does but we have to see the exact details first,” he said.
But Sinn Féin it appears had done so:
- McDonald said that she was satisfied that the new deal would not undermine the UK’s existing agreement with Brussels on the Windsor framework. She said:
We’ve obviously been in in close contact with both governments, and indeed with Brussels. We are satisfied that no part of the Good Friday agreement has been undermined or damaged. And we also know that Brussels, Dublin, all parties, are satisfied that what has been agreed stays between the hedges of the needs of Brussels and the European market, and also the concerns that the DUP expressed.
Later seemed a bit more over the changes, or at least appraised of their outline ahead of time.
When it came to the UK government’s recent talks with the DUP, Mr Martin said the previously agreed framework remained intact. “We’ve received very clear commitments in respect of the Windsor Framework”, the Fianna Fáil leader said.
Mr Martin, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, said unionist politicians had made a “significant impact” on the shape of the framework early last year, which itself had been aimed at ironing out issues with the previous Northern Ireland protocol.
The Government did not have difficulty with any “further streamlining” of trade checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, he said. Mr Martin added he had been “apprised” of commitments and guarantees the DUP had sought in its recent talks.
It feels like more positioning, doesn’t it?
As to the changes?
McDonald said her understanding was that the actual deal was concluded some time ago. (She was implying that it took the DUP time to come round to accepting the deal.)
One other point:
McDonald said her understanding was that the actual deal was concluded some time ago. (She was implying that it took the DUP time to come round to accepting the deal.)
Funny old thing democracy… January 31, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.add a comment
The NewsLetter had this yesterday:
The chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) David Campbell made the point that it was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which was endorsed by the Northern Irish public in a referendum, not the 2006 St Andrews Agreement.
The Good Friday Agreement had stated that the First Minister should be elected by the whole Assembly – meaning in practice that they would come from the biggest bloc in the Assembly, whether it be unionist or nationalist.
But…
But the 2006 deal, brokered between the DUP and Sinn Fein, amended this so that the biggest party instead would appoint someone to the post. And since unionism remains the biggest bloc in the Assembly (37 MLAs to 35 nationalist ones, and 18 other), if the 1998 deal still applied unionists would be choosing the First Minister today, even though Sinn Fein is the biggest single party.
And:
on the issue of Michelle O’Neill as First Minister, he said: “A Sinn Fein First Minister has no different status than a Sinn Fein deputy First Minister.
“The two posts are co-equal – neither can function without the other partner.
“So, Northern Ireland will be led by a Sinn Fein First and DUP Deputy First Minister, not by a Sinn Fein First Minister acting solo.
“However, a Sinn Fein First Minister is in itself anti-democratic, as the Belfast Agreement specified that the First Minister should come from the largest community designation, not necessarily the largest party.
“This was usurped by the St Andrews Agreement which was never endorsed by referendum.”
Good Lord, he’s realised this now? And it’s how many years since the St. Andrew’s Agreement? And he didn’t think to check in all that time? So what’s changed in the meantime? What indeed?
What you want to say – 31st January 2024 January 31, 2024
Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.56 comments
As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
Generative AI? Some breakthrough January 30, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.4 comments
Generative AI is an amazing breakthrough technology.
But read the article that she writes and you got to wonder is it really all that much of a breakthrough. She references stories like the following:
A recent defamation claim initiated by broadcaster Dave Fanning is a sign we have reached what his lawyer called “the new frontier of libel law” in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
An online news item mistakenly attached Fanning’s image to a story about a different, unnamed broadcaster who was on trial for sexual offences. This had no connection to Fanning.
His legal team suggested that an AI tool being used as an automated news content aggregator may have malfunctioned and been responsible for using his image in error.
Or:
In the United States, ChatGPT, quoting a fake newspaper article, erroneously stated that a law professor had sexually harassed a student. The AI chatbot claimed this had taken place while he was a faculty member of a university at which he had never taught, during a class trip to Alaska that had never taken place. Concerned that his reputation had been smeared, the professor took to Twitter to set the record straight. In Australia, an elected mayor contemplated suing OpenAI for defamation after members of the public told him that ChatGPT was claiming that he had spent time in prison for bribery. In fact, he had been entirely innocent; he was actually a whistleblower who uncovered international bribery associated with an Australian bank subsidiary. At a minimum, those affected want ChatGPT corrected to remove the false claims.
Or:
The first Generative AI defamation lawsuit was taken against OpenAI last June in the US. It was initiated by a radio presenter after ChatGPT was used by a journalist doing research on a federal case. ChatGPT incorrectly named the radio presenter as the chief financial officer of a foundation that was the subject of a real lawsuit – thereby falsely implicating him in embezzlement and misappropriation of funds. This vigorously contested case in the state of Georgia has recently been cleared for substantive hearing.
Those are just the cases she quotes. All of them appear to be profoundly problematic. The injury to those involved at the heart of them is significant and in some ways irreparable. The sense that this ‘amazing breakthrough’ is utterly uncontrolled, the social networks that much of the imagery sits upon are indifferent, if not indeed actively hostile, to notions such as truth and accuracy. And her own suggested proscriptions appear to reflect a reality that reining in all this is difficult in the extreme.
Coup January 30, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.8 comments
This looks like an interesting documentary:
Is the US government prepared to withstand another January 6? That’s the question a new documentary sparking conversation at the Sundance film festival chillingly poses, arguing that US government and military officials must brace for the possibility of a potential political coup in a divided America.
War Game, directed by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, observes a closed-door, unscripted simulation of an armed attack on the Capitol based on the events of 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters and far-right stormed the building to disrupt lawmakers’ certification of Joe Biden’s election. The six-hour exercise asked a bipartisan group of US defense, intelligence and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations to role-play the administrative response to a political coup backed by rogue members of the US military in the wake of a contested election.
But key is:
Do you respond with a strong show of force? How much force? Focus on messaging? When do things get dire enough to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, a law allowing the president to use the US military on its own citizens, considered the game’s nuclear option.
And this is a little bit more optimistic, but still:
The film stresses that while a political coup attempt is by no means likely in the near future, it is important to remember that the US has no built-in immunity to one. The repeated message is: it can happen here. “Is it probable? Probably not,” says Heidi Heitkamp, a former senator from North Dakota playing a senior advisor to Bullock’s president. “Is it possible? Absolutely.”
I’m trying to recall a time before the last seven years that there was talk of coups in the United States. Can anyone recall that? Scandals such as Watergate and certain ones around Clinton did not seem to evoke this sense of potential systemic collapse. Whereas now, whether possible, likely or probable and probably not, the sense is of these as a much greater presence. Of course it should also be noted that elections in the broad contemporary era were regarded by all involved as largely legitimate, at least pre-2020. That simple destabilisation of the public discourse, the deliberate utilisation of mistruths and misinformation has had such significant impacts, hasn’t it?
They’re back! January 30, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.19 comments
For how long and what about a split?
The Guardian notes:
Tuesday morning’s breakthrough paves the way for Sinn Féin, which overtook the DUP as the biggest party in the 2022 assembly election, to take the first minister post for the first time under its deputy leader, Michelle O’Neill – a historic, if symbolic precedent. A DUP member will be eligible to be deputy first minister, a post with equal power but less prestige.
Interesting. And an election in the South ahead. I wonder if this will hasten or delay it.
Those public sector wage agreements… January 30, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.3 comments
The Business Post had a piece critiquing the latest wage agreements between the government and public sector workers (behind the paywall here).
It notes that the headline figure of 10.25 percent ‘seems reasonable’ given “it is in line with projected nominal wage growth over the next two years, meaning it shouldn’t overly create inflationary pressures in the economy”. But, for there is a but:
Yet the average figure masks a very substantial pay increase for public sector workers on lower incomes, who are set to receive a pay hike of more than 17 per cent under this deal.
Which is a problem because:
The implications of this will be significant and it will have a knock-on impact across the economy as it will undoubtedly trigger fresh wage demands on private companies and industry.
In case readers didn’t get it the line is effectively repeated further on in the article:
In any case, the government was always going to have to cut a deal with public sector unions, which knew from the outset of these talks that the Irish state is awash with cash thanks to ballooning corporate tax receipts.
Whatever the difficulties which may or may not have existed in the talks, the public sector pay deal, on the face of it, is a bad one for the taxpayer that places significant pressure on private sector firms to match the increases.
And:
This pressure comes at a time when firms are struggling to recruit and retain staff, input costs are still at elevated levels after inflation spiked to 40-year highs, and credit is increasingly hard to come by for many firms as banks tighten their lending appetite.
Yet again, the government appears to have caved in to the never-ending demands of the powerful unions in order to avoid the prospect of all-out strikes.
Or perhaps many private sector workers are actually relatively poorly paid with insufficient provision of pensions and other conditions?
I’ve seen first hand in the private sector how public sector conditions and wages provided standards against which employers had to consider the same in the private sector. There may be many issues about such agreements but in that instance they are invaluable.
Trying to keep up with the DUP January 29, 2024
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.5 comments
Thanks to Tomás O’F (and Tomboktu in comments) for noting that the DUP meeting was so security conscious this evening that ‘blogger’ Jamie Bryson was live tweeting as the BBC put it ‘what he claimed to be’ from the event where it appears that Donaldson was asking the DUP to face up to reality
And:
One of his posts claimed that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told the meeting the police were trying to “block phone signals” in the venue.
A PSNI spokesperson has told BBC News NI it has no involvement in this.
No way to run a railroad.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 