The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Housing … May 5, 2021

Prime Time had a report last night on First Time Buyers being gazumped by investors
Darragh O’Brien had earlier launched his Affordable Housing Bill (although affordable for who was a question many were asking) Housing is such a massive issue ….. even such an easy win like taxing investment funds buying housing, never mind banning them buying in bulk as an emergency measure seems beyond our Government.
Estates being boxed off for Multinational funds looks so bad on so many levels.

It’s such an open goal for the opposition it’s incredible. Then today Labour announced they would bring forward Darragh O’Briens 2019 Bill, word for word, restricting the percentage of housing that a fund could buy in an estate.
It’s just such a huge mess. Massive rents, house prices high, supply low and a whole generation struggling with it it.

You’d wonder what they can do in their time in government to alleviate the housing problem.. Thing is, you’d wonder do elements care more about existing home owners and a fear that house prices may fall than all those impacted by the current housing crisis.

Podcast -The South Kerry Independent Alliance May 5, 2021

Founded in late 1993, The South Kerry Independent Alliance has been one of the most successful of our small parties as they still hold a seat on Kerry County Council.

A big day in the north… next Friday week May 5, 2021

For that is the day that the DUP will elect a new leader. Looks like the name of the new leader will be known by lunchtime that day. Hardly a crowded field with Edwin Poots and Jeffrey Donaldson running.

Before people get too misty eyed about Arlene Foster this is an excoriating overview from Susan McKay. On a human level one has to be sympathetic to her situation, and as noted elsewhere on this site recently she appears to be a personable individual – but really, on a political level there was much to criticise. The following is telling…

 Her resignation speech the next day was extraordinary. Foster had tried, she said, to lead her party and Northern Ireland “away from division”. People who identified as British, Irish, Northern Irish or a mixture of all three, as well as those whose identities were “new and emerging” needed to “learn to be generous to each other” and to share “this wonderful country”. That was where the future of unionism lay.

This came from the politician who previously said she had to protect the public finances and the unionist community from the “rogues and renegades” of the SDLP and Sinn Féin – her partners in the power-sharing executive – and who compared Sinn Fein’s demand for an Irish language act to that of a crocodile (if you fed them, she said, they would just keep coming back for more). The politician who took no action when one of her MPs said if such legislation were passed, he would treat it as toilet paper.

There’s a lot of talk sometimes put about focusing on a centre ground in NI politics, though sadly precious little evidence that the supposedly more moderate wing of the DUP was terribly keen on finding it. But then, as McKay notes, Foster and Donaldson played uniquely destructive roles inside the UUP in respect of David Trimble’s leadership and the GFA/BA. There may be a certain irony in the fact that a few years later they were in a party that itself went into a power sharing executive, but there’s little humour in it. And as McKay also notes, for all the talk of doing away with division (and preserving the Union), but remarkably little appetite shown for the sort of concrete steps that would have that outcome and shore the Union up for another generation or two – for example, working the GFA/BA fully, implementing a language act, lowering the temperature by avoiding inflammatory rhetoric on the Northern Ireland Protocol and so on and so forth. 

Which raises a key question. Just why is that the case? Why is the DUP, and other elements of unionism so locked into a self-destructive dynamic when there are self-evidently better approaches available. Sure, I can understand – just about, albeit the cynicism is breathtaking – that in the period from 2016 to 2019 they sought to sideline the GFA/BA by cosying up to successive administrations in London. But one would have thought that once it was evident that the Johnson government was going to go over their heads on the Protocol they would have seen that a rapid retreat and a more ameliorative language (as well as deeds) with others in NI would have been the sensible, rational, option. Whereas going out on a further limb and placing themselves at odds with the UK government, the EU, the ROI and indeed the new administration in the US, as well as the business and commercial sectors in Northern Ireland, seems borne of some remarkable strategic analysis. And given there’s no evidence of the incoming leader changing that path, what gives?

What just happened to the left in Madrid? May 5, 2021

As Paul Culloty noted in comments yesterday was a catastrophic day for the left in Madrid, culminating with Pablo Inglesias leaving Spanish politics.

What you want to say – 5th May 2021 May 5, 2021

As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

May already… unbelievable how this year is both flying in and also dragging along.

Community transmission May 4, 2021

Here’s an interesting one on foot of the reopening, from the SBP this Sunday:

This recurrent theme of individual responsibility was evident in all communications related to the new path to freedom, but despite an almost overwhelming list of things we will be able to do in the coming weeks, many will refuse to take part, still wary of the post-Christmas cost of our festivities.

One contact tracer said the consistently high numbers were “not comforting” and said she remained terrified to go anywhere. She said source investigation, whereby a positive case’s movements over the past week were tracked, consistently showed up supermarket shopping as the likely place where they caught the virus.

Even Donnelly admitted he was “nervous” as the announcement was made, saying he was cognisant of the devastation in India and other countries where the disease has gotten out of control yet again.

I went looking that up and found this:

New Covid-19 data has pointed to supermarkets as the most likely source of infection in a worrying development.

The first comprehensive study of community transmission of the virus identified shops as an area where people are most likely to catch Covid-19.

 

And:

Sources of possible transmission included shopping which accounted for 55.8%. This was followed by the workplace which saw 15% say they possibly transmitted the virus while working.

This was followed by primary schools (3.8%), public transport or car sharing (3.5%), travel at home or abroad (2%), outdoor gatherings (1.9%), pre-school gatherings (1.8%) and outdoor sports activities (1.7%)

Oddly:

The HSE’s lead on test and trace Niamh O’Beirne has said this does not mean that there is any particular increased risk associated with shopping/supermarkets but rather it’s the most common thing people have been telling the contact tracers.

Does that mean that this is one thing most people do, but the actual source might be something else? I’m presuming that’s the interpretation. I do a shop most weeks in the local four letter acronym and in general adherence to mask wearing and so on seems pretty solid, certainly much much better than smaller supermarket/grocery outlets I’ve been in (I was in one last week where both people in the queue ahead of me were unmasked – thankfully the place was like a wind tunnel with entrances at both ends of the shop, but I could imagine some people being uneasy). I’m not anxious going shopping, fingers crossed, but there’s a remarkable vagueness as to what the actual risks are. And yet there’s the reality that one has to shop – it’s not exactly optional, and although a range of outlets have brought in click and collect not everyone will be able to access those sort of services.

Infiltrators… a continuing series May 4, 2021

Good on Peter Hain for calling it out like he is in reference to the public inquiry on undercover police infiltration of left wing and associated campaigns.

The Labour politician told a public inquiry the officers “very rarely told the truth” and exaggerated the threat of violence posed by the campaigners in what he called “straight lies and pernicious smears”.

He repeatedly accused police spies of fabricating their reports on him and the other protesters in order to “justify their role or potentially to damage their targets, like me”.

Sadly all too believable is the following:

The inquiry, headed by former judge Sir John Mitting, has released to Hain 70 secret reports that detail how at least six undercover officers spied on him between 1969 and 1994 while he campaigned against apartheid and racism.

And Hain, who served in a Labour Cabinet faced this sort of stuff… 

The inquiry is also investigating a claim that an undercover officer described Hain as a “South African terrorist” in a 2003 secret report while he was in government.

He’s right here, too:

He accused the British police spies of “putting themselves of the wrong side of history” by infiltrating anti-apartheid campaigners, when instead they should have been investigating violent acts carried out in London by the South African state. He said the South African and British police worked hand in glove with each other.

Keep in mind that much of this surveillance was at a time when Hain was in that hotbed of subversive radicalism described in the following:

The spies also monitored Hain’s activities between 1972 and 1975 while he was a member of the Young Liberals, then the youth wing of a mainstream political party. They reported details of small private meetings of this group and anti-apartheid campaigners that were held at his parents’ home, where he also lived.

Union news May 4, 2021

Interesting to see that there’s some impact from the current dispute in the ESB.

ESB Networks has acknowledged that industrial action by some network technicians has caused limited impact to customers, and called on the Independent Workers Union to cancel a further two-day strike due to get under way tomorrow morning.

And:

The network technicians belonging to the Independent Workers Union have been engaged in a work-to-rule since 19 April, and have also held two 24-hour strikes.

They say the dispute is over the right to be consulted about outsourcing of certain work to private contractors – and claim to represent over 500 of the company’s 1500 network technicians.

However, the company does not recognise the IWU, which rejects suggestions that the dispute is really over union recognition.

Meanwhile:

The company acknowledged what it called the “strong support” provided by staff belonging to affiliated trade unions (Connect, SIPTU and Unite) who have said they are not involved in this dispute.

Any thoughts on the political impacts of all this more widely?

Getting their excuses in early… May 3, 2021

Some telling framing going on here – this in an Irish Times piece on the ‘reopening’ taking place now and into the medium term with respect to the pandemic.

The mood in Government on how the coming weeks will play out was last night described as “nervous”.

One senior source said “we’re placing faith” in Nphet, which has “been on the cautious side of right on most things”.

And if numbers spike up? Well, presumably Nphet will have to take the heat. 

In his letter, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan also warned people are “gradually pushing the boundaries” of public health measures, with compliance at its lowest level since last summer “with a particularly steep fall in recent weeks”.

The problem is that there appears to be an effect of some becoming less cautious in advance of restrictions being lifted, and once they are lifted they become less compliant with the remaining restrictions. 

It’s going to be a bumpy ride for the next number of months.

Left Archive: Public Meeting Posters May 3, 2021

An unusual but welcome posting, and many thanks to Marcus O Cadain for forwarding these to the Archive.

Here is a selection of posters issued by political parties and by unions on a range of issues. They’re expressly not electoral – for electoral materials please go to IEL’s Irish Election Literature collection. However they do capture some of the more day to day local campaigning by some parties on local issues.

One exception is the Unite Hospitality poster for a Public Meeting for Hospitality and Low Paid Workers, hosted at Wynn’s Hotel and with Joan Collins TD, Dave Gibney of Mandate, Cllr Cieran Perry (Communities Against Low Pay) and Julia Marciniak (Hospitality Worker).