Monthly Archives: May 2011

Odds and Ends.

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Interesting move by Fianna Fail to open up their presidential nominating process, as detailed here. Let’s hope they mean it, and that a few Oireachtas members and councillors have the courage of their convictions to follow FF Cllr. Malcom Byrne of Wexford in nominating David Norris. Fianna Fail have a lot to win here, by endorsing another candidate. After all, the presidency is not a normal partisan job, and we don’t regard the current incumbent as a Fianna Fail president. It’s also a severe juxtaposition to Fine Gael in power, whose “New Politics” involves instructing their councillors to deny voters as many choices as possible.

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The Morgan Kelly article continues to both fascinate and terrify, as remarked here in the Indo. I’m of two minds about defaulting, primarily because of the need to instigate eye-watering Army-on-the-streets cutbacks if we go through with it. Having said that, if we can put shape on the consequences, as Professor Kellyhas outlined, and have a clear picture of the outcome of default, then maybe it’s time that both options be put to the people. Comrade Joe and Richard Boyd Barrett will of course say that it’s a false choice, and that a socialist republic should also be on the ballot. It should also be stressed, by the way, that we would not be defaulting on our national debt, nor would that be a good idea. We had a very respectable debt before the bank guarantee, and it would be important that we clarify in the minds of the markets that our word is still good when it comes to real sovereign debt. After all, we will want to go back to the markets eventually.  

Will public sector workers, people on welfare and the dole vote to accept 33% cuts? We could be about to enter hold-onto-your-hat times.

I wonder, will the SNP use first past the post in the Independence referendum?

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Here’s a thought: As the British people have decided that First Past The Post is a perfectly legitimate way to making important decisions, how about Alex Salmond using it in the referendum on Scottish Independence? See, Salmond has a problem, in that he currently needs to win 50% of the vote to win, or at least that’s the perception. But as the people have now overwhelmingly endorsed the principle of a most votes wins regardless of whether the majority agrees, this gives the SNP a fascinating option. Why not put more than two choices on the referendum ballot paper? Why not increase the options the Scottish people can vote on? You could have the status quo, giving more powers to the parliament, or complete independence? That way, Salmond will not have to win 50%, but would probably win with maybe only 40% if he can keep his voters together and split the unionist vote. True, it will mean that an important decision will be made with only minority support, but what could be more British than that? Just imagine the fun you could have with an EU referendum under those rules: Withdrawal, a common market, or the status quo?

You know, maybe I’ve been a bit harsh about First Past The Post.

Odds and Ends.

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I was asked recently as to whether, viewing so many of my friends and peers holding public office, do I miss being in politics? Would I not be tempted to run again? The answer, after some thought, has been no, for the simple reason that I just don’t see the point anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve an ego as big as the next guy, and the thrill of getting elected would be something else, but I always imagine what the job would be like six months later on a wet Tuesday night. Listening to constituents whinge non-stop as to why they should get other people’s money and why you are a bastard for not getting if for them. I just have not got the temperment for that. As for the other stuff, the real politics of changing the country, well, that’s nothing to do with you. Just look how many FG backbenchers have kicked up at the party’s U-Turns. You have no real actual power in Irish politics until you are in the cabinet. After all, why is it that nearly every Irish backbencher, councillor and senator starts working, almost immediately upon election, to get out of the office he has just been elected to?

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Fine Gael have done a U-Turn on reducing the size of the Dail, as seen here. Which means that they actually lied during the election, because surely they must have known that it would require a referendum. Or are they just dopes as opposed to liars? After all, they had over 50 full-time parliamentary assistants funded by my taxes, so surely someone in Fine Gael must have looked at party policy to see if it was, you know, legal? The Five Point Plan has become a two finger plan, it seems.

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But, even I admit that only a certain section of the public gives a toss about how many deputies sit in the Dail. But if you want to see the moment that Fine Gael sent a signal to its middle class private sector bedrock to go f**k themselves, it was here with their apparent proposals on kicking the crap out of people who pay for their own pensions. Here’s a thought: If Fine Gael feel that the public sector pension regime is now fair and equitable and affordable, how about opening it up on a voluntary basis to the whole country? Let any private sector worker who wishes pay the same contribution into the pension as public sector workers, in return for the same benefits. Overnight, we’d end all the division in the country about public versus private sector pensions, wouldn’t we? It is not like we can’t afford it, because if we couldn’t afford the current public sector pension regime, Fine Gael would be doing something about it, wouldn’t they?

The people have spoken.

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And they’ve said No to AV, as is their right. It’s a dark day for electoral reform, because although many on the Yes side will say that they voted against AV and not in favour of FPTP, a result is a result. In a national referendum, they voted to keep the status quo.

What now for the Lib Dems, for whom electoral reform is the golden calf? It’s a tough one, with the anti-reform Tories now surely emboldened to try to block reform where they can, by, say, dragging their feet on House of Lords reform.

I do hope that some academics do a study as to why people voted No. I’d love to know, for example, what proportion of both Yes and No voters actually understood AV. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not playing the old “the voters are stupid” card, because I’m not. But I do find it hard, coming from a PR background, to understand how people can vote for a voting system that can have such huge discrepancies between how people vote and the result. Does the average Brit know that, or maybe it just does not matter to them? Today’s result shows that the blunt instrument of FPTP is a system that a very substantial number of Brits are happy enough with, or at least, not bothered enough to change.

Yet, consider this future news broadcast: 

“…and if you’re just joining us here on Election 2015, the news is that despite winning over half the votes of the British people between them, the first government to do that since 1931, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has been ousted by Ed Miliband’s Labour party, despite Labour having received less votes than the coalition.”

I’d be outraged at such an outcome, but seemingly the average Brit wouldn’t be.

The one sliver of hope is that FPTP has within it the seeds of it’s own destruction, that with the growth of the SNP and UKIP and the Greens that eventually it will throw up a result so divorced from how the public voted that  it’ll force electoral reform back on the agenda.

And to my friends in the Yes campaigns, be strong. I remember the night of the Nice Treaty, when I realised that the majority of the people in the country I live in voted against the values I hold most dear. For the first time in my life, I was in a marked minority. I know what you’re feeling now, that aching vacuum of all that work and passion and hope. It hurts. But it will pass, I assure you. The morning does come. We have seen dark days of terrible despair. We’ve seen people told not to sit on lunch counters or sit at the front of the bus. Then we saw the son of a Kenyan immigrant elected President of the United States. Things change.    

When we lost Nice, we cried and despaired too. We licked our wounds, and learnt our lessons, and organised, and came back.

And we won the next time. 

Guest Post: White House: Obama did not personally kill Osama

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By our correspondent, Colin Murphy.

The White House has backed away from early suggestions the President Barack Obama personally adminstered the “tap tap” of fatal shots to Osama Bin Laden in his billion-dollar booby-trapped mansion in Pakistan.   Early reports, based on conversations with senior officials, suggested that Obama had been instantly transported to the scene of the Navy Seal raid from the White House situation room, via an invisible mini-transporter which the President wears around his head.   Obama at first sat watching via live video link as the Navy Seals deployed the latest in sophisticated weaponry to breach the near-impenetrable, high-walled compound. However, when a Seal cut his thumb on some barbed wire while attempting to scale an eight foot wall, the President decided to personally intervene, reports said.   Obama fought off attack from Bin Laden’s hareem, who were armed with long nails and, in some cases, scratchy jewellery, it was claimed. Identifing Bin Laden by his long beard and low-resolution face, Obama pursued him through the compound, avoiding fire from Bin Laden’s shoulder-held rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Catching up with Bin Laden as he was about to activate a large booby trap which would have seen the Navy Seals all fall through trapdoors into the basement, Obama let off two clean shots. At the last moment, one of Bin Laden’s underage wives through herself in front of him, being killed in the process.   Further reports suggested that the President had then hoisted his fellow Muslim’s body onto his shoulders and carried it to a helicopter. Later, on board a US Navy vessel, he personally prepared the body according to Islamic rites and recited the appropriate prayers, before overseeing its burial at sea.  

However, as contradictions emerged in recent days between accounts of the episode, apparently sourced from high-level security briefings, and from others with at least a passing knowledge of where Pakistan is, the White House has moved to clarify the narrative of the event.   It confirmed today that President Obama was not transported to the site, and was not even watching a live video link, which kept stalling because of poor bandwidth. Instead, he received updates via Facebook Chat from the operation’s director, Leon Panetta. Panetta finally confirmed Bin Laden’s death with a coded ‘Poke’ on Facebook, a spokesman said. There were no women at the site, no weaponry, and the walls were not actually very high, he confirmed. Bin Laden had given a Navy Seal “the finger”, and the Seal had responded with a burst of automatic fire which had decimated him, the spokesman said.   “No pictures can be released because there wasn’t much left to photo,” he said.    Bin Laden was given the full burial rites appropriate to “a murdering terrorist bastard”, be said.

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Anti-American Lickspittle.

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Down with America! Oh Ambassador! USA! USA!

Down with America! Oh Ambassador! USA! USA!

She’s a great one for sneering at the yanks. Now, she’s not one of the political Richard Boyd Barrett types, if anything her politics is strictly of the “what’s in it for me?” variety. But she likes the cache of being anti-American in a country that is subtly more pro-American than anywhere else. It makes one look cosmopolitan and Guardian-reading. She criticises US actions around the world for not being perfect, never once suggesting that Ireland should contribute one cent to the effort.

Then she gets an invite from the US embassy to a party hosted by the ambassador. Instantly, the anti-Americanism goes out the door. She stops posting comments online, and ever so slightly starts moving into the pro-American camp. She starts turning up at American Chamber of Commerce dinners, and at the ambassador’s soiree she practically offers herself to the ambassador, hoping for an invite to one of those Young Leaders type junkets to Washington DC.

Her photogenic features start appearing in promtional bumf talking about “the importance of the Irish-American relationship”.

Two years later she’s named in Wikileaks as a CIA source. 

Good DVDs worth seeing: My Best Friend

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My Best Friend

My Best Friend

“My Best Friend” is a French comedy starring the always watchable Daniel Auteuil as a wealthy art and antique dealer who makes a bet with his business parter that he actually has a best friend. Dany Boon plays the cheerful trivia-obsessed taxi driver he recruits to teach him how to make friends. It’s charming (a word I hate using, but is appropriate here) rather than laugh out loud funny, and also stars as Julie Gayet as Auteuil’s business partner, one of those stunning French actresses who would be global stars if they were American. I really enjoyed it, but then, I can enjoy almost any movie set in Paris.  

Shock Yes win in AV referendum as No voters struggle with “complex” doorhandles, push/pull signs in polling stations.

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Despite numerous polls to the contrary, the proposal to adopt the Alternative Vote was narrowly carried in Britain today after it emerged that No voters, convinced that the preferential voting system that involves being able to count was too complex, failed to successfully negotiate their entry into the polling stations to cast their ballots. The No campaign was quick to condemn the result, and demanded a second referendum.

“It’s a disgrace” a spokesperson for No2AV said, “Ordinary voters have been deliberately bamboozled by having fiendishly complex so-called “handles” to operate to gain access into the polling stations. How can ordinary working people be expected to understand that if a sign on a door says “Pull” that they shouldn’t push the door? In fact, what is the government doing spending taxpayers hard earned money on fancy luxuries like polling station doors when it could be spending the money on flak jackets for our brave boys in Afghanistan? I blame Nick Clegg”.

 

PANA’s latest press statement. Bless.

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“The People’s Movement is organising a demonstration outside Dail Eireann on Monday 9/5/2011 from 12.30-2.30pm to protest against the government’s EUROPE DAY. PANA is calling on all its supporters to take part.
Roger Cole, Chair of PANA said:
“Since 1996 PANA has campaigned against the gradual destruction of Irish Independence, Democracy and Neutrality and our integration into an EU which is being transformed treaty after treaty into a centralised, militarised, neo-liberal superstate. Its support for the NATO war on Libya, including the attempted murder of its Leader and the killing of one of his sons and several of his grandchildren, is only the latest example of the kind of military future the EU has planned. The EU apart from justifying murder, has ensured that the ordinary people of this country are to suffer massive and continuing cuts in their living standards in order to bail out the EU bankers. What is the response of the Irish elite? It organises a EUROPE DAY. What planet do these people live on?”

This is just great stuff. First up, the word PANA are looking for here is “Earth”, a planet they are no doubt familiar with from their many visits.

Secondly, why does leader get a capital L? Is it an L. Ron Hubbard type of thing? 

Here’s a thought: Hands up which of the following people don’t actually get chosen by their own people in free elections: Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Muammar Gaddaffi. Free airstrike for the winner.