May 21, 2007 at 5:57 pm (Fitba, Norn Iron)
Dear God, I know I wrote recently that the late George Best was Norn Iron’s answer to Princess Diana, but even I was startled to see this story about a new George Best Fabergé egg. If you fancy seeing it up close, it’ll be going on display tomorrow at George Best Airport. If you don’t drive, you could always pay your fare with a George Best fiver.
May 19, 2007 at 3:13 pm (Blueshirts, Desocrats, Fianna Fáil, Greens, Ireland, Irish Labour, Provos)
God, but wasn’t Prime Time desperate? It had the wholly unforeseen consequence of making me warm slightly to McDowell. Gerryspeak does my head in at the best of times, and between Grizzly’s torrent of abstract nouns and Rabbitte’s continuing impersonation of an 18th-century parliamentarian, I could well empathise with Dirty Mike’s eye-rolling.
OK, so we are now going to look at possible outcomes of the election. I’m not so daft as to try to predict the result of an STV election, but some hazy outlines can be discerned. And I’ll stick my neck out and say that the most likely new government is Fianna Fáil and Labour, although Bertie and/or Pat may have to make way for Brian and/or Brendan in the process. There are of course other possibilities, but this is the most credible one.
The consensus is that Fianna Fáil have had a shocking start to the campaign, which is true in the sense that the party hasn’t dominated the media agenda and its poll ratings have slumped. But there are a few factors militating against that. One is that the punters don’t seem as exercised about Bertiegate and stamp duty as the chattering classes. Another is that, as any fule kno, you can’t place any credence on a national poll. The constituency polls are more interesting, especially the batch of eleven done by Red C for the Examiner group and helpfully summarised in this week’s Phoenix. These indicate that, while FF support is dropping and Fine Gael support rising quite markedly in most areas, this isn’t translating into a big net shift in seats.
There are good reasons for believing this. One is that FF’s higher starting vote makes it easier for them to convert votes into seats, a situation strengthened by the new (and almost certainly unconstitutional) boundaries. The Blueshirts have the converse problem, that Big Phil has failed to crack the whip and therefore they are running far too many candidates to take advantage of the swing. It is of course true that the Red C batch doesn’t cover Dublin, where FF are likely to do very badly, but then the capital is virtually a Blueshirt-free zone and one expects FF losses there to benefit the Provos and Greens rather than the official opposition.
Now, for Electric Enda to become taoiseach a number of criteria have to be fulfilled. First, Fine Gael needs to up its seats from 32 to a minimum of something like 55. These enormous gains have to be overwhelmingly at the expense of FF, and without causing collateral damage to Labour or the Greens. Assuming Labour hold steady at about twenty and there are eight or nine Greens, a bare majority could be achieved – assuming Labour prove resistant to FF blandishments and also assuming that the Greens will come on board, which Clever Trevor to date has conspicuously not done. That’s a hell of a lot of assumptions, and for starters I would be astonished if FG break 50.
Fianna Fáil are likely to remain easily the largest party, despite significant losses. That gives them more options, although they certainly won’t be nearly close enough to the magic 83 that a government could be formed with the support of a couple of indies or the wreck of the Desocrat Hesperus. If the FF tally is in the low seventies, then FF-Green or FF-Provo become possibilities, although either of those parties would have some hard thinking to do first. If FF suffer a bloodbath in Dublin and fall significantly below 70, then Labour becomes the only realistic partner. And it is of interest that Rabbitte, previously viscerally hostile to FF, has been allowing himself sufficient wiggle room lately to make it look plausible for him to do the patriotic thing and become Tánaiste either way.
Obviously this is all just speculation at this point. But I strongly suspect that there won’t be an obvious winner next week, which will make for some fascinating horse-trading.
May 17, 2007 at 2:10 pm (Journalism, Norn Iron, Provos)
I know I’m a bit late with this, but I couldn’t resist flagging it up. Big shout out to Brad for the tip – I’ve been laughing myself silly for the last lot of days.
I refer of course to last week’s Jim Gibney column in the Irish News. Now, it’s no secret that I don’t like Jim very much. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone who does, despite his decades-long prominence in the Provisional movement, a position owing more to his usefulness to Grizzly than anything else. I’ve never really been able to work out whether Jim is a complete cynic or a complete idiot, and his weekly column offers a third possibility, that his entire political career is some kind of absurdist conceptual art project.
According to Jim, the restoration of Stormont, with Papa Doc as prime minister, marks the abolition of the old partitionist settlement and the creation of a 32-county political framework heading helter-skelter towards a united Ireland.
“From this point forward through the operation of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement – the all-Ireland ministerial council, the executive and assembly – all the people of this island for the first time since partition will be part of a single, island-wide political entity,” arsa Séimí.
Whatever Jim’s smoking, I want some of it. We know what the GFA/St Andrew’s settlement amounts to. It isn’t of course the same as the Stormont of 40 years ago. As the estimable Séamus Mallon says, it’s Sunningdale for slow learners. While this might fit the Life on Mars aspect of Norn Iron politics, it raises uncomfortable questions, not least about the morality of a war that continued for 20 years after Sunningdale. If this is the apotheosis of the republican struggle, we should have grabbed Sunningdale with both hands. If on the other hand we were right to reject Sunningdale in ’73… well, that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.
This is why Jim only spends about a third of his article praising the restoration of Stormont. The rest is spent on that old Gerryite rhetorical ploy of backslapping the base.
Jim explains: “In 1932 the newly-opened Stormont building reflected the unionist ethos of the times. To its fore the statue of Sir Edward Carson, to its side the grave of Sir James Craig, all around it unionist east Belfast. [Both are still there, but Jim doesn’t care to mention that.] Unionist luminaries protecting a parliament – the preserve of unionists. On Tuesday the building housed those with a story of a different kind – nationalists. A displaced people, a maligned people, a marginalised people at last found their rightful place at the centre of political power.”
And then Jim goes on to namecheck a fierce number of people, well respected people among the republican community, who got passes to the Great Hall in Stormont to watch proceedings. Families of hunger strikers, relatives of death squad victims, ex-prisoners and divers republican luminaries, all were there for the big occasion. And I wouldn’t begrudge them their day in the sun, but… there is a subtle difference between republicans attending a grand Stormont occasion and the achievement of republican goals. A smart guy like Jim should know this.
I couldn’t help thinking of a quip the late Joe Heller aimed at the Commentary milieu: “Invite a Jew to the White House and you make him your slave.” Invite a Provo to Stormont…?
Anyway, if I were the editor of the Irish News, I would be thoroughly ashamed of inflicting this drivel on the newspaper-reading public. And I would probably be thinking of placing a call to Morrison or Hartley, and see if they could do a more convincing job.
May 16, 2007 at 6:00 pm (Culture, Loyalism, Norn Iron)
And so we return to one of the perennial moral panics of our age, the video game, with the news that Norn Iron has inspired its very own shoot-em-up. The Masked Gunman is apparently a Grand Theft Auto-style game that allows players to assume the role of a loyalist or republican godfather, and build a paramilitary empire by engaging in extortion, pimping, drug-dealing and bumping off one’s enemies. This had Nolan’s listeners in paroxysms of fury this morning, on the grounds that it glamourises violence. The creator responds by arguing that only other paramilitaries are killed, not civilians.
This marks one departure from gritty realism. Another objection might be that, while the activities described are a fair description of how armed loyalism functions, the Provos have been making most of their money through “legitimate” business ventures for decades now. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for a thrilling gaming experience.
I wonder if Johnny Adair, now reinventing himself as Norn Iron’s answer to Chopper Read, is going to put in a claim for royalties. And it’s curious that the bookshops are coming down with Johnny’s heavily fictionalised autobiography – which really does glamourise the life of a semi-fascist thug – but the great Ulster public seem pretty much unexercised about the matter. Nor do they seem to worried about the massive subsidies being directed to armed loyalism by the British government.
May 15, 2007 at 6:17 pm (Blogging, Far Left, Ireland)
I’ve been remiss, I know, in not writing more about the Free State election. The major reason for this is that I’m thoroughly browned off hearing about Bertiegate and stamp duty, which may be preoccupying the O’Reilly press but are of relatively little interest to me. There will be a few more posts, I promise, over the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, as an aficionado of trenchant leftist writing, I’m pleased to see that Socialist Democracy have relaunched their election blog. Their writing style may be a bit dour for some tastes, but the blog is actually a little bit lighter than the main SD site. Anyway, it may appeal to the many people who find this blog too flippant.
And of course, more detailed ongoing coverage at the always readable Cedar Lounge. And allow me to make an appeal here – there aren’t many Irish left blogs, but if I’m missing any please let me know in the comments box.
May 15, 2007 at 5:50 pm (Norn Iron, Paisleyism)
So, with devolution barely a week old, our elected representatives have turned their attention to the most pressing issue facing Norn Iron – their own pay. It looks very much like there will be a hefty hike in MLAs’ pay, with a formal review looming. This of course led to the expected populist tub-thumping on Radio Ulster this morning, with callers to Nolan and Dunseith taking umbrage. Two arguments were adduced in favour of a rise – first, that Peter Vain was making them do it, and second, that MLAs hadn’t had a pay rise in five years. That is, they hadn’t had a pay rise during the period the Assembly was suspended. Aye right.
But that’s coming up. For the present, our beautifully groomed proconsul’s last executive act before handing over power last week was to up MLAs’ office expenses from £48,000 to £70,000 for each of our 108 Stormont reps. This will enable our public representatives to better serve their constituents by putting more family members on the payroll. I suppose this counts as affirmative action for our political class. It also sheds a rather different light on the DUP’s two offices in Comber, given the joint statement from Hamilton and McIlveen that party policy was to claim every last penny in available expenses.
Who says nobody gets anything out of Stormont?
May 11, 2007 at 4:30 pm (Philosophy)
I haven’t yet managed to see the new documentary film Žižek!, which hasn’t yet made it to the provinces. I have however read the review thereof in the New Statesman by Johann Hari (age 13¾) in which Johann shows little or no understanding of what the great man is about. I’m far from being an uncritical fan of Žižek – I find him entertaining and aggravating in pretty much equal measure – but he surely deserves better than the treatment Johann dishes out.
Steven Poole has already written a quite excellent riposte to Johann, which I won’t recap in any real detail. I agree with Steven that Johann shows little sign of understanding what postmodernism is. There is no shame in that – even Alex Callinicos, the Greatest Living Philostopher Known to Mankind, doesn’t understand what postmodernism is. But Žižek isn’t a postmodernist, and cribbing from Francis Wheen’s Mumbo-Jumbo and throwing around “postmodernist” as an all-purpose insult doesn’t really make a case. Likewise, Johann finds Lacan impenetrable. Again, I find Lacan pretty obscure, and that’s with a background in Reichian psychoanalysis. But Lacan’s obscurity doesn’t prove Žižek’s charlatanry, unless you hold to the philistine English view that anything difficult must be smoke and mirrors.
There are also some rather distasteful guilt-by-association arguments, of the Marko Attila Hoare variety. As in: Žižek approvingly quotes Alain Badiou; he must therefore subscribe to Badiou’s entire bill of goods; Badiou used to be a Maoist; therefore Žižek is an apologist, at least by proxy, for Mao’s atrocities. Not only is this unconvincing, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. For instance, in the Balkan wars Badiou took a pro-Serbian position, while Žižek has quite a pronounced streak of Slovene chauvinism.
What I wanted to pay some attention to is the question of exactly why Hari doesn’t get Žižek. A commenter on the Poole review noted that Johann has a double first in philosophy from Cambridge. Now, Johann is a smart bloke, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify him to comment on, oh, most modern European philosophy. Cambridge, erstwhile stomping ground of Russell and Wittgenstein, is the spiritual home of analytical philosophy, which is to be sharply distinguished from the continental Hegelian tradition.
Let me explain. The Hegelian approach to philosophy is basically historicist. The analytical approach is pseudo-scientific – “pseudo” because, as Sokal and Bricmont could tell you, philosophy is not a science. Nonetheless, it aspires to be scientific, and especially to approximate mathematical thought. Remember that 99% of scientists don’t give a rat’s ass about Newton’s life and times, or the historical context of the development of Newtonian thought. They don’t even read Newton’s books. What they want is to have Newton’s laws clearly written down in a textbook.
Well, analytical philosophy is a bit like that. Its methodology is based on the idea that a philosopher’s work can be boiled down to succinct “propositions”, and the task is to critique those propositions. Historical background, context, even translation from foreign languages, are of no interest to the analytical philosopher. If you have an essay to write on Wittgenstein’s concept of free will, you can read the works of Wittgenstein and the relevant contextual literature to your heart’s content, but your essay will hinge on Wittgenstein’s propositions. In fact, if you are a skilled bluffer, you can just go to the index, find three or four quotes on free will, and build a massive interpretive apparatus around the propositions. The propositions stand alone, and your interpretation can only be judged on its own coherence.
This actually works pretty well for Wittgenstein or Russell. It doesn’t work at all well for any philosopher who can’t be easily reduced to “propositions”. This is why Cambridge’s responses to Nietzsche have been uniformly wretched. It explains why Baudrillard drives English philosophers haywire. And it’s also a clue as to why Johann, for all his smarts, seems to be totally clueless when it comes to Žižek, Badiou or indeed Derrida, who he lashed a while back.
It occurs to me that an awful lot of these comical misunderstandings could be avoided if a) Britain followed France’s example of giving secondary-level students a basic grounding in philosophy, and b) the tyranny of analytical philosophy was replaced by a return to a more historicist approach. I don’t, for example, believe that a philosophy student should be let loose on Nietzsche without at least a minimal grasp of German language and literature, and the history of Nietzsche’s time. This would be quite a challenge to traditional English philistinism, but it might be worth it for bringing some clarity of thought. Of course, we Irish aren’t in much of a position to talk, as there is virtually no philosophical activity on the Emerald Isle, barring a few Thomists in the religious orders. A few steps on that road over here may be in order.
And if you get the chance to see Žižek the movie, please do. Once you get a grip on the accent, old Slavoj is quite the turn.
May 10, 2007 at 5:50 pm (Desocrats, Fianna Fáil, Ireland)
So the early stages of the southern election campaign have been dominated by Bertie’s finances. This is probably entirely predictable, when you bear in mind that the timing of the election was very specifically designed to get the Mahon Tribunal adjourned. But apart from the usual to and fro, there are two aspects to this thing that interest me.
The first is the intervention of Tánaiste, interior minister and Desocrat gauleiter Michael McDowell. Given that his party’s supposed raison d’être is to keep Fianna Fáil honest, Dirty Mike could scarcely fail to come out with a hard-hitting response. Nor did he. What McDowell said was that, while the Desocrats would not leave the government, he, McDowell, could not vote for Bertie’s re-nomination as Taoiseach unless he, Bertie, gave a full statement on his personal finances to the Dáil. Now remember that neither of these things – the statement or the vote – could take place until the Dáil reconvenes, namely until after the election.
Bertie, who has more front than Amanda Brunker, treated this flapdoodle with the contempt it deserved. Of course, our leader said, he had no objection to giving a statement to the Dáil after the election. And why should he have? The worst that could happen is that he would be subjected to a more than usually sanctimonious speech from Rabbitte. And Bertie, with the wicked sense of humour one expects, went on to make Dirty Mike look even more ridiculous by offering to answer detailed questions on his finances, but only to the proper authority – the Mahon Tribunal, conveniently adjourned until after the election.
Our Bertie is a lot sharper than he lets on. He’s well aware that in the next Dáil the Desocrats – who could well see their parliamentary party reduced to just McDowell and Harney – won’t exactly be in a position to issue ultimata. And we’ve been in this selfsame situation before. Last year, McDowell had a perfect opportunity to bring the government down over Bertie’s brown envelopes trouble. Bertie played chicken with him and Dirty Mike, whose desire to remain Tánaiste far outweighs his concern for the probity of public life, bottled it.
The second interesting aspect of this affair is that, far from this corruption row being a disaster for Fianna Fáil, FF’s poll ratings are starting to pick up a little. This of course also happened during last year’s Bertiegate storm, and it puts me in mind of Sir Garret’s dictum that the Irish political class isn’t really all that appalling when you consider the Irish electorate. It seems the great unwashed aren’t quite as high-minded as Electric Enda, Rabbitte and the Irish Times. Plus, many of those most loudly proclaiming their outrage at FF corruption would never go near FF in the first place. Indeed, I come back to a recurring theme of this blog, that the state class of tofu-eating South Dublin neo-democrats exist in an antagonistic relationship to most of the Irish nation. So, when IT editrix Geraldine Kennedy berates the peasantry for being so morally derelict as to vote Fianna Fáil, it only makes the peasantry even more likely to vote Fianna Fáil.
Besides, so what if Bertie is on the take? If you believe Frank Dunlop, so is most of the political class, and FF more so only because FF is the dominant party in the state. In fact, what is more surprising is the relatively modest amounts quoted. Bertie is no Robert Mugabe – he isn’t even a Charlie Haughey. And I have a feeling that it does his image as a lovable Del Boy figure no harm at all.
May 9, 2007 at 6:15 pm (Norn Iron, Paisleyism, Provos)
Well, Ian and Marty’s love-in at Stormont yesterday went off as planned, and apparently the brave new dawn for Norn Iron begins here. Except, notwithstanding the international press corps, Mr Tony, Bertie, and the boosterism of our relentlessly upbeat local media – determined that this time it’s going to work – the general mood seems to be one of boredom rather than euphoria. What one hears is not so much “At last! At last!” as “About bloody time”. Don’t get me wrong – most people still support the peace process, and that alone is enough to keep it afloat a while yet, but there is a terrible amount of cynicism about.
It was striking, listening to the Radio Ulster coverage of the restoration yesterday, that both Nolan and Dunseith were having trouble finding callers with much positive to say about the new dispensation. In fact, the most vocal contributors were unionist backwoodsmen who, one sensed, were opposed to power-sharing as a general principle. Nolan had on a spokesmen for disabled cops, who talked a bit about how his constituents were feeling – which was fair enough – but then went off on a ramble about how MLAs should have to swear allegiance to the Queen and how the Union Jack should fly over government buildings at all times. He was followed by a rural fundamentalist who gave out that the DUP had entered Stormont to stop the Brits passing immoral legislation – he had been told this personally by Singing Willie – but now Edwin Poots was going to give the gays three grand for their parade.
Of course, these guys aren’t representative, any more than the three (count ‘em!) small demos at Stormont. There is nobody in the Assembly to the right of Big Ian, in fact no substantial opposition from any quarter. And two of the three demos – the water rates one and mad loyalist Willie Frazer – were lobbying the Assembly, while the SWP and anarchists just wanted to shout at Mr Tony over Iraq. Outright opposition is very much a minority taste, and even most of those who seem oppositional are within the Big Tent of the peace process to some extent.
My gut feeling is that the Assembly will be stable, for a while at least. And the lack of any great expectations may actually work in devolution’s favour – when you don’t expect much, there isn’t likely to be a backlash from disappointed punters. The big question is, will this Executive be as awful as the last one?
Update 10.05.07: My spies inform me that there were not three but in fact five small demos at Stormont. A contingent of republicans came down from Derry to protest against this imperialist settlement, so they at least got the point. And there was a bloke from Fathers 4 Justice, but unfortunately he had nobody to hold the other end of his banner. Nor was he dressed as Spider-Man, which is a bit of a disappointment.
May 4, 2007 at 2:24 pm (America, Culture, Far Left, Loyalism, Norn Iron, Scotchies)
No, I’m not doing the Scottish elections. Frank’s piece on Cedar Lounge pretty much says what I wanted to say, and there’s very little I could add to it. For some background, these two articles from the Irish Socialist Network and Socialist Democracy, representing the more thoughtful end of Irish leftism, may be of interest.
But there have been a few amusing snippets over the last day or two, starting with this story from the Beeb about the Ulster Scots hotline that took zero calls in three years. This boondoggle derives directly from the parity of esteem provisions of the GFA, which stipulates that promotion of Ulster Scots, on a par with Gaeilge, will build confidence amongst the Prods. Actually, most Prods find the thing a bit of an embarrassment. Even OUP peer Lord Laird (or should that be Laird Laird?), former Heid-Yin of the Ulster-Scotch Heirskip Cooncil, reckons the thing is a waste of money. Although, unsurprisingly, he still begrudges any public cash being spent on Irish. [Update: As has been helpfully pointed out in the comments below, this story was first broken by the Belfast Telegraph, having got the facts under FOIA. As we believe in giving credit where it's due, have a look at the original story here.]
A tiny article appears in a sidebar in the Irish News on the introduction of yet more repressive legislation, the purpose of which is obscure since we’re supposed to be at peace now. This latest measure, which applies only to the North, allows the peelers to seize computers belonging to journalists who won’t divulge their sources. One might refer to it as the Ed Moloney Order. Normalisation, forsooth!
Irate small businesspeople from Protestant areas phoning Talk Back, wondering if the UVF’s historic statement means they can get away with not ponying up next week’s protection money.
Finally, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack O’Bama turns out to have Irish heritage, as is traditional for prospective US presidents, seemingly being a Kearney from Offaly. I could have sworn his family was from Kenya, but there you go.
The title, as anyone from Ballymena could tell you, is the negative of “Scots wha hae”.
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