Although I’m no longer a member of a political party, I have considered myself a politically engaged citizen. After this week, I’m not so sure. Just look at the political vista spread out before us: A government made up of two parties which, through either incompetence or just bare faced deception is now reduced to actually having to listen to their own speeches, their own speeches, being read back to them in opposition to their policies in government.

Or what about Fianna Fail, having recklessly run the economy into the ground, now pretending that nothing has happened and advocating the exact populist “these cutbacks are a disgrace, this county deserves that new road” positions that allowed them to thrash the country in the first place, effectively making the speeches made against Fianna Fail when they were in government.

Then we have Sinn Fein and the United Left both pushing a line that all the cutbacks can be reversed and paid for by somebody else other than the majority of voters, neither party of the alleged left willing to advocate the reasonable left wing concept of common sacrifice through higher taxation for all as the price for the common good.

In short, save for constitutional referenda, why would I bother voting? Is it that unreasonable to want a party of the centre that does not overpromise and undeliver, that recognises that every euro spent must be earned and accounted for, and that does not sign up to the Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour “Omerta” code of silence when it comes to making politicians pensions and severance packages reflect the reality of the lives of their voters? Is it madness to want a party that resists the Irish political urge to say whatever it takes to get elected, on the basis that getting elected is the goal and everything else, like actually running the country, will be sorted out on the day?

Of course, I’m assuming that the Irish voters would actually vote for such a party, but given the old-style “F**K everyone else!” demands of the voters of Roscommon and Mullingar, I won’t be holding my breath.  

Haha! Fooled them!

When I first heard about a Bundestag committee casually giving out our budget details, I was outraged. Here we were, cooperating with a friendly power, and this is how they treat us? But the more I read about it, my opinion changed. Consider this:

The German Finance Ministry is obliged to report to its democratic masters, the Bundestag, details of where German workers money is going. That’s what they did, and it raises two questions in my mind.

The first is why did our Department of Foriegn Affairs not know this would happen, and secondly, if the government knows that VAT is to be raised to 23%, why do we keep it a secret anyway? The answer I heard, as to why tax rises like VAT and customs and excise duties are kept secret is because if people knew in advance, they may rush out to buy more stuff before the rise comes into force. But so what? The purpose of the Department of Finance is to order our fiscal affairs, not attempt to snatch extra money off the Irish people by tricking them with sudden tax rises. 

Transport minister Leo Varadkar recently announced that the newly appointed heads of the CIE companies had been “vetted” by an Oireachtas committee. Andrea Pappin, the Miss Marple of political fact finding, writes about it here and dug up the relevent committee hearing here.

I suggest you read it, if only for the bitching at each other from the members of the committee about who came late, who is not being “respected”, and whose phone is ringing during the hearing. Hilarious.

Who vetted the vetting committee?

Fine Gael and Labour were elected on a platform of change. Let’s see how they’re doing:

Restored the Minimum Wage +1

Held a referendum on Judges’s Pay +1

Held a referndum on Oireachtas Investigations +1 (I know, I know, but they did hold one)

Made some interesting Seanad appointments +1

Made progress on debt interest reduction +1

Not being a government engaged in chaotic reshuffles or being actually drunk +1

That gives them a pro-change score of +6

Now:

U-turned on Mullingar barracks -1

U-turned on Roscommon hospital -1

Went Franfurt’s way rather than Labour’s way -1

Gave an obscene Fianna Fail-style severence package to Willie Penrose -1

U-turned on Leo’s previous position on Metro North -1

U-turned on parliamentary scrutiny of semi-state appointments -1

U-turned on appointments of henchmen to state boards -1

U-turned on third level tuition fees -1

Giving an anti-change score of -8

Which overall gives a score of -2. 

SF put away the crayons, and take out the grown up pens.

If you can, take a goo at Sinn Fein’s budget 2011 submission here. It’s well worth reading, and I say that not because it’s the usual far left Utopian stuff I rail against, but because it isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s a left wing document, and it advocates higher taxes on those earning over €75k (A rate of 48%), hikes in capital taxes, the closing of generous pension write-offs and a 1% wealth tax on non-working assets. But it’s not the usual Richard Boyd Barrett “Corrib Gas will pay for everything” guff. It’s thoughtful, costed (I can’t comment how well) and here’s the thing: It would look very comfortable in the hands of a French Socialist.

That’s not to say I agree with it. I’d love Sinn Fein, indeed every party, to be able to submit their proposed documents to the Fiscal Advisory Council to at least publicly verify that the sums are correct. There’s no reason why Sinn Fein should not make the request, on the basis that such an endorsement, provided their figures are indeed correct, would be worth its weight in gold.

Secondly, SF, like most political parties on the left, don’t seem to understand that taxes themselves have an effect on economic activity. For example, SF assume that a rise in Capital Gains Tax will bring in a certain amount of extra money. What they don’t understand is that a rise in CGT will often make property owners decide not to sell, and wait for a future government to cut the rate in the future. Waiting a few years to save a couple of hundred grand can be worth it.

Thirdly, I’ll be fascinated to see the effect the higher income tax rate will have on SF support amongst better paid public sector workers. Having said that, it could attract  lower paid private sector workers for the exact same reason.

I remain sceptical, because the plans still hinge on most problems being solved by the well-off and business being willing to sit every year and be milked, tax wise. That rarely happens, and if anything governments that try it can attract lesser returns each year as ambitious and talented people go elsewhere in search of lower taxes. SF, like Labour and the ULA, still takes the Progressive Democrat approach to the overall tax take, that it is possible to have high public spending and low taxation for the great majority. It just isn’t true.

Having said all that, the Fianna Fail response to all this will be interesting, because this is the sort of document that a Sinn Fein/Fianna Fail coalition negotiation would be based initially upon, and it’s not cloud cuckoo stuff.

In fact, it’ll be pretty hard for FF to claim that it is trying to recover its working class base without embracing policies like these. Assuming SF does not get to those voters first, that is. One thing it will do is open a conversation point in FF, between those willing to go left with Sinn Fein, and those willing to look at Fine Gael as a possible alternative.  

We get one chance at this.

Apparently, next year the government will create a constitutional convention to review the Irish constitution, look at the issue of political reform amongst other things, and then put its proposed changes to the people. Now, for political reformers like me, this can go a number of ways. The first is that the government will try to pack the convention in such a way as to ensure that it never gets near serious reform. The second is that it comprises a fair representation of the country, does consider serious reform, but decides against it. The third is that it considers reform, proposes it, and the people reject it. The fourth is that the proposals are adopted.

Where would that leave reformers? Options 1-3, the most likely outcome, will leave us with politics pretty much the way we found it, the system that got Ireland to where she is today. Option 4 gives the country a chance. I could certainly see myself, after options 1-3, deciding to turn my back on Irish politics, not as much in a huff as recognising that political reform would probably be off the table for a generation, and so I should do something more productive with my time.

But it also raises the point as to how important it is that the right convention be assembled, with at least 51% of its members random members of the public. If we want that, we have to act on it. So, dear readers, let’s do it. If you are interested in putting together an email campaign to government TDs to make them realise that voters do actually care about this stuff, drop me an email, and let’s start talking about this.