Thoughtless comparisons October 22, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in Africa, Gender Issues, Inequality.add a comment
I was at a conference the Equality Authority and Equality Tribunal held yesterday to mark their tenth anniversaries. (Mathematics clearly wouldn’t be their strong point: both organisations were established in 1999, a year after the Employment Equality Act of 1998 came into force. But, as eleventh anniversary conferences go, it was grand.)
Two of the speakers (independently of each other) made a specific point about gender equality. For the most part, their arguments were fine. There was, however, one aspect of how they made their cases that I was unhappy with. So, what I have to say is unrepresentative, both of the overall thrust of what those two speakers said and of the tenor of the conference as a whole.
The point of gender equality that they were concerned with is the number of women in the Oireachtas. Ireland doesn’t have a good record on that: in a poster, the UN reports just under 14% of the members of the Dáil are women. (The data is a bit out of date, as it gives the current membership of the Dáil as 165. But when you have over 180 countries to report on annually, that’s not a major defect.)
Both speakers reported where Ireland stands in the rankings (88th). And both of them then compared that ranking with the ranking of an African country — one mentioned Cameroon which is also ranked 88th, and the other referred to Sudan, which is in the 60s in the rankings.
It strikes me as a form of racism that when they two speakers wanted to show how poor we are, they compared us with African countries and only African countries, as if lower standings in wealth and industrial development in Africa should automatically translate into lower standards in other areas.
They could, for example, have said we are worse than Slovakia but better than Hungray.
At last — court appearances on corruption charges October 22, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in Uncategorized.5 comments
Yea Gods. Charging of those on either side of the middleman has started. (And not too soon, said I last Nov.)
This week on the Irish Election Literature Blog… October 22, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.3 comments
From AK is a fine selection of material which deals with the contemporary, and the not so contemporary… including a fascinating document from Fianna Fáil. Excellent range, thanks as always to AK.
From the 1997 General Election “My Contract with the Northside” from The Democratic Left’s Helen Lahert running in Dublin North Central
An abridged version of the 1977 Fianna Fail Manifesto, the inaptly named ‘An Action Plan for National Recovery’
A “Make Dublins New Mayor Work For You” leaflet from Paul Gogarty
A 2007 leaflet from the Socialist Party’s Mick Barry
A 2004 Election Newsletter from the SWP’s Shay Ryan.
A poster from the 1970s for the Murrays.
And…
The final one is Mary Harney from 1992
Resistance from the Irish Socialist Network… October 22, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.1 comment so far
Many thanks to John O’Neill for the following. It’s an excellent edition of Resistance and well worth a read.
Articles from the latest edition of Resistance, the Irish Socialist Network publication, can now be read on the ISN site.
Resistance includes contributions from Cieran Perry about his first year on Dublin City Council and a review of Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave by Tommy McKearney of Fourthwrite, along with Paul Moloney’s thoughts on the commercialisation of football and Ed Walsh on the proposal to make July 12th a holiday in the South.
You can get printed copies of Resistance in Connolly Books in Dublin and Solidarity Books in Cork, or contact the ISN at irishsocialistnetwork@dublin.ie to be put on their mailing list for a free copy.
A snap election? October 22, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.1 comment so far
A final reference to the Sunday Business Post for this week, and there’s been so much going on its hard to know where to start. I’m glad Garibaldy discussed the UK situation because that’s almost beyond belief, from what is by any measure an outright attack on the fundamental basis of the welfare state in the form of universal provision.
Anyhow, briefly, the Backroom column last week had a piece which asserted that the day the banking bailout cost was ‘identified was a gamechanger’, because, and I think there’s some truth in this, ‘the prospect of seeing an economic recovery before the general election went out the window’. As the SBP says, the people who took ten years to get us to this point now say it will take at least seven years to get out. You know, that’s such a gulf of time and that – frankly – scares me. Think about it, where you were seven years ago and what might happen in the next seven years. It’s a fair old chunk of anyone’s lifetime. Which makes the blithe often indifferent commentary we hear about ‘pain’ particularly unbearable. At least to me anyhow.
They were assured that, by then, it would be evident that Fianna Fáil’s competence, experience and grit would rescue the country from a recession which was caused by international factors.
Black Thursday killed that narrative.
The good days will not be back in 2012.
At best, we will be halfway through the course of tough medicine.
The patient will still be in intensive care, another two years away from the recovery ward.
The public will have had four harsh budgets and a promise of another two to come.
Just two after 2012? They must be kidding. Even at best we’re looking at three or four beyond that, and if the ESRI is to be believed many more as growth remains tenaciously beyond our grasp and we enter a lost decade.
But from this the writer argues that:
There is now a compelling case for Fianna Fáil to engineer an election as soon as possible.
Losing in 2010 would be infinitely better for the party’s long-term future than losing in 2012.
A new Fine Gael/Labour government taking power at the end of 2010 would face having to bring in five hairshirt budgets.
Even savage cuts in the early years are unlikely to put the economy on an upward trend.
This sounds attractive. I’ll give it that. But I’m not so sure about it, or the following:
By the time the election after next comes around, a fickle public will have forgotten their current anger at the Soldiers of Destiny. Some of the existing ministers, including Cowen, will have moved on – and some of the younger guns, such as Dara Calleary, Thomas Byrne and Darragh O’Brien, will present a new younger face for the party.
The current presumption, that all governments must be an FG/Labour coalition or a coalition led by Fianna Fáil, will be redundant by 2015.
A refreshed, new-look Fianna Fáil could be an acceptable coalition partner with either Fine Gael or Labour in 2015, depending on how relations between the parties survive five years of slog in government and a difficult election. Black Thursday may also have changed the outlook of the electorate.
I think this seriously underestimates how long the aftershocks, in political terms, of this crisis will reverberate. The idea that Fianna Fáil caused this crisis will be deeply embedded, and new leadership or not the notion of Fianna Fáil economic competency must be entirely compromised at this point and for long after. That doesn’t mean FF will fade away, simply that it has lost lustre, and how.
And one wonders at how the bitterness engendered by the crisis both within FF and further afield will play. Sure, on paper the idea of an FF sufficiently scrubbed up – and presumably sufficiently weakened – that it could work with FG sounds just about plausible, but prod it to any extent and it seems to fall apart. Not least because it ignores cultural differentiations between the support bases and activists of both parties. These may not seem to the outside observer to be so very great, but those of us on the left know all to well the way differences often seem greater the more insignificant (or irrelevant to political activity) they may be.
And more generally, to pick up on something from yesterday, I would have serious concerns that the breach of trust all this constitutes may be of a nature unprecedented in this state and may see ultimate political expressions that are as unwelcome as they are unexpected. We’ve already seen a rhetorical ugliness across the last two years probably unmatched in the state since the height of the conflict in the North. The danger for any polity is when long-standing formations disintegrate whether at state level or below it.
In any case the anonymous writer of this piece argues that a snap election is just the ticket…
If Fianna Fáil and the Greens can publish a credible four-year plan in early November, they could seize the political initiative.
A plan that sets out a schedule for cuts in spending with precision about what is to be cut (capital projects, public services, public service pay and numbers) and what new taxes are to be raised (water charges, property tax, income tax rises) could allow them to claim the high ground for honesty and clarity.
They could shift the debate about how we got into this mess into how we can get out of it.
They would put it up to Fine Gael and Labour (especially the latter) to spell out their plan for pain. It’s unlikely it would prevent a kicking for Fianna Fáil in the election, but it might temper some of the damage.
And…
Of course, Fianna Fáil will have to engineer a scenario that paints them as being forced into an election.
A few wobbling independents and/or Fianna Fáil backbenchers will be needed to throw shapes, and help Cowen to realise that uncertainty must be ended and an election must be called.
Last week’s meetings with the party leaders on a possible budgetary consensus might even provide a useful backdrop.
In truth, there is little downside for Fianna Fáil.
Most of its ministers have had more than a good innings in office.
A spell in opposition, especially at a time when the government is constantly fire-fighting, would allow the party to re-invent itself.
For Fianna Fáil, like the economy, the sooner the medicine is taken, the quicker the recovery.
PS: a date for your diary: November 25,2010 – election day.
I find this highly unlikely, not so the prospect of an election – given the disposition of forces, though those watching closely will note that some of the more errant and vocal souls who have departed the orbit of the government seem to be on a tangent that brings them back home. Slowly, very slowly, and with no guarantee that such an outcome will occur, but sufficient that passing the Budget may not be the greatest problem for the government this Autumn/Winter.
No, what I find unlikely is the idea that the FF Ministers, and indeed Parliamentary Party, will simply say ‘Okay, it’s a fair cop’, pack their bags and head for the hills. Why on earth would they? They know they’re going to be out of power for quite some time to come, which makes being in power now all that much more valuable. And the psychology of power, and I don’t mean this to be a particularly cynical analysis, this is simply the way this operates, is such that it is relinquished voluntarily before it has to be relatively rarely.
This generation of FF leaders are unlikely to see its like again. And the next one? Well, it might be quite a while. And the difference between being in power and being in opposition is so great that none of them would mistake the one for the other.
They may intellectually know that their chances of making it past the Spring are limited, which they surely are, but there will remain a hope that they might make it to Summer 2011, perhaps even a little further on, perhaps a lot further on. And while that may sound absurd the truth is that if they could lash together a deal with the Noel Grealish’s of the world and see some of their errant colleagues return they’d just about be able to do it.
Do I think that is a likely outcome? How on earth would I know, but I’d think that in the heart of every FF minister, and indeed more than a few backbenchers that is a consideration. As is the thought that if time dulls the rage of the electorate then either just before a Budget or directly after it is about the worst possible time to go looking for their opinion. And remember, they can wrap themselves in the flag, the ‘national’ interest, whatever the hell takes their fancy. That’s more than justification for most.
They’ll keep going, at least as long as they possibly can, each finger of political power prised away one by one by events, because in truth from their perspective the alternative is no alternative at all.
Comprehensively Screwed. Royally. Being Working Class in Cameron’s UK October 21, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in British Politics, Inequality.21 comments
It’s a bad play on words in the title I know. But I couldn’t think of an acceptable insult starting with ‘r’ to complete a description of the in-no-way-simpering-over-privileged-idiot millionaire Gideon “Call me George” Osborne as a Conservative Sickening R… Perhaps the CLR readership will be able to come up with one. Still, I shouldn’t be singling out Osborne for being a millionaire. After all, he’s one of 23 in the cabinet. They’re still all just ordinary people though don’t you know, who understand the problems of ordinary people, and totally sympathise with them. I guess deciding which billionaire’s yacht to spend your (free) holiday on is a bit like having to decide whether you spend your benefits on eating or heating that week.
The full Comprehensive Spending Review is available here (see page 11 for a convenient summary of the scale of the cuts), and its effects are analysed here for their impact by sector in the Guardian. In its own words, the Coalition’s Spending Review “makes choices”. Particular focus has been given to reducing welfare costs and wasteful spending”. This, apparently, is to allow a focus on the NHS, schools, early years provision, and capital investments that will promote, we are assured, long-term prosperity. And, indeed, fairness. The use of the word ‘fairness’ in this way is an affront to the very concept of linguistic meaning. Not only will the choices made promote fairness, they will also answer the strategic coalition aim of ensuring social mobility. I’m looking forward to being told how, for example, raising the fees for university places between two and four times will guarantee social mobility. A few token bursaries for working class students will no more ensure widened access to the likes of Oxford and Cambridge than the scholarship schemes have done for the likes of Harrow and Eton. Or that the scholarships used to do for Oxford and Cambridge in the past. We know from past example that this is sheer fallacy. Ah the cry goes up from the Blue-Yellow snake, there was no Big Society back then. And of course cutting the Communities budget by 51% is going to help create it isn’t it, and help defeat the spread of religious and far-right extremism? Suddenly I have images of the snake from the Jungle Book, asking us to “trust in me”. Or perhaps a HypnoToryToad.
The consequences of these choices to build fairness and social mobility are, to put it mildly, outrageous. Half a million job losses in the public sector, which will pretty much guarantee about another 200,000 go in the private sector from the deflationary effect. Social housing as we understand it looks very likely to be on the way out – new social housing tenants will pay up to 80% of market rates themselves, and more “flexibility” in the system means that attempts will be made to get rid of people from social housing at every available opportunity; fixed-term contracts look likely. The government believes that upping rents will result in more social housing being built by property developers – government policy deliberately designed to aid property developers and housing speculators you say? Surely not. Can it be coincidental that local government is having its capital development budget cut by 100%?
One of the counter-arguments put to the claim that it is necessary to cut £7bn from the welfare bill is to go after the £20bn-plus hole in public finances caused by tax evasion. A search of the CSR PDF reveals that evasion turns up 5 times in 106 pages. Four of these are the same £900m allocated to go after tax, fraud, evasion and avoidance. Fraud – which admittedly includes a few cases of fraud other than welfare fraud – appears 16 times. So that’s 4 times with evasion and avoidance; and around 7 times in relation to welfare fraud and error. This despite the fact that tax evasion and avoidance costs 15 times what welfare fraud does. And as for welfare error, what about the estimated £10.5bn that people are entitled to but aren’t claiming? Is the government going to make sure they get what they are entitled to, backdated? We all know the answer. We also all remember that Lord Ashcroft, Tory Peer and major donor to and former deputy chairman of the Tory Party was forced to admit, nearly a decade after the Tories gave a pledge on his tax status, that he was not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Accusations about his relationships with politicians in the tax haven of Belize continue to fly. Tax avoidance and evasion is ok as long as you donate enough to the right political parties.
Obviously this could go on. It’s sickening to look at the document and see the words ‘fairness’, ‘reform’ and ‘sustainable long term growth’ appear time and again to try and hide the reality of what this is. As Seumas Milne notes, this is the Bullingdon Boys trying to finish what Thatcher started, to rip the heart out of the welfare state. The cuts are going to hit the very worst off the hardest. They will least affect the rich, as was the case with the mini-budget in June. Simply put, the CSR is an act of class war. The working class across the UK is being made to foot the bill for the crisis of neo-liberalism and the corrupt and vicious ideology of the Tories and their Lib-Dem cheerleaders-cum-minions. They are counting on the weak organisation of the working class to carry this through. Politics matters. Resistance matters. And we can start by promoting the ICTU march against the cuts on 23rd October, assembling at St Anne’s Cathedral at 12.30.
Corporate and political power. An example. October 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in US Politics.11 comments
This I missed some time back, but it’s an amazing story really, and perhaps shows up the distortion of the US media discourse. In September as noted in a piece in Slate by Sonia K. Katyal and Eduardo M. Penalver of Fordham Law School…
Fox News sued Robin Carnahan, Missouri’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, for copyright infringement. Admittedly, Fox attacking a Democratic politician isn’t surprising. Nevertheless, the lawsuit is something of a watershed, because it appears to be the first time a news organization has filed a copyright lawsuit against a political candidate for using a news clip in a campaign ad before an election.
Carnahan had done what any number of candidates have done before, take a clip from a TV newsreport, in this instance from Fox, of her opponent Republican Roy Blunt in an interview where Chris Wallace of Fox News ‘questioned Blunt… about his ethical standards’.
You can read the suit here. It’s interesting to see that Fox argue that the ad breaks copyright and ‘represents a threat to its reputation for objectivity’. No threat there I suspect most of us would assure them. Not on that score.
As Katyal and Penalver note:
The network said it sued to protect the reputation of its news business for accuracy and objectivity. But, curiously, the complaint reads more like a press release for the Blunt campaign: “In a smear ad against political rival Roy Blunt, Defendant [Carnahan] . . . has usurped proprietary footage from the Fox News Network to make it appear–falsely–that FNC and Christopher Wallace, one of the nation’s most respected political journalists, are endorsing Robin Carnahan’s campaign for United States Senate.”
Now as noted by Slate, it’s not unprecedented that news organisations refuse the right to rebroadcast, but this is the first time that someone has been sued. And it’s particularly curious because Blunt has used Fox footage himself in his own ads with, as Slate says, ‘no objection’.
The problem? A chilling effect on political speech in the US. Now there’s a counter thesis that US political discourse would be better off with out political spots on television, but that’s a broader argument and one which seems unlikely to be ever implemented given freedom of speech issues. In this instance it is the appearance of a partisan approach… As On The Media, on NPR, notes:
FOX’s parent company, News Corp., recently made a one-million-dollar donation to the Republican Governors Association, not to mention a donation [$10,000] to Blunt himself.
And the further problematical aspect is that, as Brooke Gladstone on OTM asked…
So you got to wonder whether objectivity is really what the network is defending with this lawsuit or its brand as pro-Republican.
That’s an interesting one for Fox to tussle with. As Katyal, interviewed for OTM noted:
SONIA KATYAL: I agree with that. I mean, I think we have a news organization that – you’re entirely right – has made very strongly partisan claims on behalf of one of the candidates and against the other.
But here’s the thing. One has the feeling that Fox has recognised the reality of its situation, that it is influential but niche (albeit an expanding one) and this would seem to indicate that it is happy for the situation to remain that way. During the Bush era that also made sense. They were after all an outrider for the administration and the prevailing political worldview – at least for much of even the second term. The current period though has brought them something of a dilemma, torn between the insurgency of the Tea Party and the broader Republican base.
In a way that’s mighty odd because one would imagine that they would seek to build market share by softening a little at the edges. But not at all. Perhaps there is also the recognition that there is no particular boundary beyond which if they step they will have gone too far, at least not in a time when Tea Party candidates are on the rise.
Meanwhile, in passing, another most interesting report in the same edition of On The Media also on Fox pointing out that likely hopefuls for the 2012 Presidential Elections, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are all employees of FOX News. And this has remarkable implications. They’ve signed agreements with FOX that they are exclusive to them. So short of publicly broadcasted events they cannot be on other news channels or shows. And this has a serious political impact.
JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, you have to either air their appearances at public events or you just have to pick up what they said on FOX, where they’re getting little scrutiny because they’re on the staff.
In my reporting I talked to folks inside the network who were deeply uncomfortable with what is going on because it obviously puts them in a very tough position on the news side. They have to deal with those candidates or potential candidates that are not being paid by FOX, who are complaining about equal access and about what it means for the campaign. They’re going to be running against candidates that are FOX employees.
BOB GARFIELD: There’s an – I think, an even more disturbing wrinkle, and that is that now presumed candidates are literally on the payroll, so not only do they have the benefit of FOX’s audience to campaign for free, they actually get paid to do so. At some point, does this amount to an in-kind contribution to a political campaign?
JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, that’s the word that came up when I was talking to one longtime GOP strategist who was not involved yet in the campaign, was “in-kind contribution”. There is no question that having that FOX news platform is perhaps the most coveted sort of pulpit for any potential GOP presidential aspirant.
There is no better way to communicate directly, and with really little filter, too, to the kind of voters that are going to decide the next nominee of their party.
Although as noted by Bob Garfield this cuts both ways.
BOB GARFIELD: But what about the flip side of that question, what about the notion that FOX’s audience is already so hardcore -
JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.
BOB GARFIELD: – that by staying within the comforts of home, these candidates actually surrender access -
JONATHAN MARTIN: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: – to the audience that will make the difference in the election?
JONATHAN MARTIN: That’s a great question, and, and I think that, if one of them does win the nomination, they’ll almost certainly have to broaden their media availability beyond FOX News to reach a broader audience.
But I think what’s important is that for now, looking toward the primary, this is sort of a FOX primary.
It’s easy to rail against the perceived excesses of Fox. It really is, and often that serves as a form of displacement activity. But this, this seems to see a process of crossing lines (even if, as with the issue of interview clips, they will be beaten back here and there). And for all my mistrust of political analyses that position corporations as almost comic book villains – it’s the class and capital that is the bigger issue, it is remarkable how much Fox, quite deliberately one supposes, likes playing to a certain caricature. And that would be find and dandy if it weren’t for the small issue that this has serious apparently partisan and potentially distorting in actual political activity.
And the Budget? October 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.10 comments
I’m mining the Sunday Business Post this week, and no mistake. But why should that be so odd? Like or loathe it, and I sit in the former camp – largely, the SBP is a serious paper that doesn’t hide its ideological and economic leanings under faux-populism or mealy-mouthed liberalism.
That we now have a mainstream media that is almost entirely at one with the economic orthodoxy is near unremarked, but it is a remarkable situation, is it not? Despite the fact that the austerity measures continue to miss targets – and why is it that there isn’t more said about how the economic policies adopted here are by the one supposedly crucial metric we are offered, the size of the deficit, not regarded as being appallingly inappropriate given their evident lack of success? This week we saw the Labour Party and Fine Gael, as I noted before, operating as supplicants, but perhaps that’s incorrect. Perhaps they were more like conduits, feeding yet more bad news out into the public space, news that for some inexplicable reason the government had chosen not to tell the electorate.
And what also remains inexplicable is the panic amongst the great and the good that somehow the policies adopted won’t be pursued, or perhaps it is all too explicable. Those policies haven’t worked, the situation (as was predicted by many, worsens), the cuts proposed now assume even more baroque proportions (if it weren’t for the actuality of their impacts when implemented upon both the least well off and those on middle incomes). We have already, so it is said, had adjustments the scale of which are near unprecedented in modern European economic terms. I fear that this has led our leaders to believe that almost anything will be accepted, that there is no limit to what they can inflict upon us.
The government will shortly announce a programme of spending cuts that will be far more severe than anything the country has previously witnessed.
These will come against a background of discretionary public spending that has already been pared to the bone in many areas.
Unbelievably bad…
As this newspaper has reported in recent weeks, officials in some government departments have been left reeling by the scale of what they are being instructed to implement.
Ireland is not alone in this exercise.
All over the world, economies are being subjected to brutal austerity programmes, necessitated by the costs of dealing with the near collapse of the financial system and the deep recession that followed it.
A note of doubt…
There are real reasons to doubt that the current vogue for austerity – as much an article of faith in the European Commission and the European Central Bank as it is in London, Washington or other political capitals – is suitable for the world economy right now [erm, my sense was that Washington dissented from this].
The risk of a renewed, or double-dip, recession remains real.
Swiftly dismissed…
But it is pointless, really, for Ireland to waste too much of its time considering these questions – and it is the politics and economics of make-believe to advocate that Ireland run its fiscal policies on a different basis from the rest of the world.
Hmmm… on the one hand we’re told about Irish exceptionalism (our situation is uniquely awful – true to an extent – but probably not irremediably so), on the other we’re told everyone’s at it.
We have a deficit that has been stabilised but is far too large.
We have a €19 billion gap between our annual incomings and our outgoings, before any account is taken of the bank bailout.
The markets that lend us that money want an austerity package, or they will cease lending.
Yes, but as ever the problem with that is that we’re on an austerity path, that this was mapped out over the past number of years and continues to be. The outline was made public as to the targets to be met some while back.
I still wonder why the SBP is so exercised by this. Both Fine Gael and the LP agree with the broad outlines of what is believed to be done, yet in editorial after editorial they seem to argue that all are arguing from bad faith. I’d love to think that might be, even in small part, true. But I strongly doubt that it is which makes me wonder what precisely is going on.
In simple terms, they want a plan which convinces them that they will get their money back if they lend to Ireland.
Ah, so the SBP doesn’t believe the Government either. But why would that be? perhaps it’s the fact that the economy is flatlining under the impact of cuts and a lack of stimulus. Or perhaps they believe that the Government might break in the face of…well… what? Mass public protest? No sign of that so far, though if there were mass mortgage defaults we might see something a little more pointed. Or is it that they really believe that as the cuts bite yet further into services and provision in a context where much has ‘already been pared to the bone’ that they are actually afraid that there is no way that this can be passed politically by the electorate, and hence the rushing around the last few weeks to cobble together a faux national consensus where none genuinely exists, and now this.
This – and not the EU Commission, or the political game-playing going on domestically – is the key issue.
And as ever this ‘painful’ medicine is now acknowledged to do almost as much harm as good [or if you believe the IMF as much, full stop]. The ESRI certainly seems to think there are problems, the IMF is somewhat equivocal, though the Commission in its wisdom continues to adhere to 2014.
The spending cuts will be severe and damaging, deflating the economy by their impact.
They will hurt most those on lower incomes, because those who depend on the state are by definition more exposed to reductions in spending.
Meanwhile the middle and higher earners will suffer more [I presume the 'more' isn't meant in relative terms - unless the SBP has lost all contact with reality] from the inevitable hikes in taxation.
Achieving political and public acceptance of the package is now an urgent task for the government.
The Greens’ initiative to seek political consensus – though likely born more out of political self-interest than anything else – at least recognises that there is an issue here.
The government – this one and the next one – must convince the public that the budget package to come is necessary, that it is fair and, crucially, that it will pave the way for better times ahead.
But check this out…
The case for fairness is complicated; fairness means different things to different people.
Too many people believe it is fair that someone else should pay for things. Some believe that the better-off should pay; others point out that having an income tax system which omits almost half of all taxpayers is hardly fair.
Too many people? Well, that’s a line bordering on chutzpah when I and you and everyone we know has been presented with the bill for the systemic failure of a financial, construction and banking sector which no more than a handful had any hand act of part in same. Indeed this is a dismal example of how narrowly focused the SBP editorial line here and previously has been. Taxation has always been regarded as bad, and it’s only now in extremis that it is tolerated, barely. We have a society that has since the late 1990s been living on borrowed money with ludicrously low tax takes, and burdens. And as I noted yesterday even Cliff Taylor writing in the SBP this weekend notes the reason why a tax system omits almost half ‘reflects both the distribution of income here and the way the system operates’. In other words most people are – relatively speaking – paid relatively low wages compared to a much smaller group making considerable money and consequently paying much more in taxes.
But the government must make the case that the overall package is broadly fair, rather than being bogged down answering the charges of individual interest groups. The case for the future can only be made by a government which believes it has a future itself.
It is difficult to see how the present government can communicate the last message.
It has lost the will and the capacity to talk to the voters. It does not believe it has a future itself. It is increasingly clear that the budget must be followed by a general election early next year.
And yet why? To legitimise the current situation? The attempt to corral all within an ‘agreement’ on economic policy demonstrates how essentially meaningless an election will be. This is moving towards the antithesis of politics.
******
On a different matter I found the SBP editorial on the current ‘analysis’ of the semi-state sector and the companies and staff to be remarkably narrowly focused as well. After lashing ‘gold-plated pensions’, etc…
It is a fatuous argument to say these companies are ‘profitable’. If the ESB or Bord Gáis incurred lower management and staff costs, they could charge less to consumers and businesses.
Hmmm… The problem with that line is that if the companies were in the private sector they would then presumably have to see significant portions of their ‘profits’ diverted to shareholders. Would the situation be better? I’m somewhat dubious of that proposition.
The energy regulator is correct to look for pay cuts at ESB, as opposed to the proposed increases.
The same should apply to state companies across the board.
A dose of reality is needed here. If the boards and management of these companies will not drive this, then the government must.
It is ridiculous to be discussing the prospect of pension and welfare cuts when some of the best-paid employees and managers in the country are not asked to make any sacrifice for the common good.
What is the point of public ownership of these companies, if they do not act in the public interest?
I find there’s something irksome about having to hear how state enterprises, well those that do turn a profit, have to impose a regimen that the SBP would condemn as communistic were it to be applied in the private sector. Imagine introducing limits on wages in the private sector, putting an upper limit on pensions, and so on. It simply wouldn’t wash. Indeed note how all the populist rhetoric of the Harris’s and that ilk balks at anything so… radical.
Whatever about the PS/CS more broadly where the government must balance income/expenditure, the arguments for such constraints in the semi-states which do turn a profit seem curious in the extreme, and not merely because higher wages in profitable enterprises increase the tax take for the government. As ever, if the wage/pension offends thee, well increase the tax.
Thought that’s not an argument I suspect we’ll be hearing from the SBP editorial any day soon.
We’re all in this together? October 20, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.31 comments
Drivetime on RTÉ on Monday night had Camille Loftus of the Poor Can’t Pay campaign and Moore McDowell. And it was some conversation.
We were treated to Moore McDowell arguing against Child Benefit and universal entitlements more generally. Which is a step change in the discourse we’ve heard to date. So we can expect more of this, no doubt. He was arguing that he had no need of free transport because he could afford to pay for it. Why, oh why should he receive this? Why? Why? I paraphrase, but only slightly.
Of course he didn’t bother to delve into the issue of why universal benefits, and in particular child benefit are more efficient at dealing with child poverty than means tested benefits. That would bring a difficult, complex, note to the argument. One which didn’t simply use the metric of expenditure (boo-hiss, bad, bad, bad) but rather saw this in terms of outcomes as well as expense. Of course if you don’t give a rashers about outcomes…well…
As Loftus noted ‘there’s a simple way of dealing with the distributional issue… raise taxes’.
Audible sighs from McDowell. And then he was on to the 5% of the taxpayers at the top are paying 48% of the tax. This is such a specious argument. It really is. Amazing that he should continue to trot out this line.
What he neglects to note is that it is that 5% who collectively earn vastly greater sums than all else, or to use the phrase, that’s the way income distribution is skewed. If Cliff Taylor can admit this in the Sunday Business Post why not McDowell? Again though, why introduce complexity?
He argues the country ‘cannot afford to consume goods and services of the public sector’. And he argues that collectively we’ve got to reduce our standard of living and that means most people in the country and that means the super-rich and that means most people are going to suffer.
Except er… McDowell has himself noted that he can easily forgo free travel and presumably other benefits. That’s not really my definition of ‘pain’, though he waved it about as some sort of token of fiscal and societal virtue. But his final contribution was most telling.
The presenter asked Loftus what about the people like Moore McDowell who are in receipt of free travel can afford to pay an annual subvention for it.
I’m delighted to hear it and he can contribute more tax.
And the response? A near snarky…
“Thanks!”
Lèse majesté! And perceived as such.
Because perish the thought that he might, y’know, pay a little more tax to assist those who have a lot less. Or any sense of proportion that he’d spent the previous five minutes arguing for cuts in welfare and benefits. Indeed what virtue is there in parading ones willingness to jettison something one has no use for and can easily afford while proscribing increases in taxation for those who can ill afford them and simultaneously dismissing the idea one will pay increased taxation oneself for a societal benefit? At best there’s something unedifying about this.
Anyhow, exit to chuckles of disbelief from Wilson and McDowell.
We’re all in this together? I don’t think so.
Those were the days… October 19, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History, Irish Politics, The Left.10 comments
…from the Galway Advertiser, sent by a good friend of the Lounge…
