The Man Who Does Political Anger As An End In Itself.

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Jason O

At the most extreme end, he’s his own worst enemy. He can sometimes make a valid point, but always destroys it by getting nasty and personal. C**t is a big one. He just can’t help himself. Scroll down his timeline and take out the personal attacks, and see what’s left. Very little. Hating has become a way of life. He wakes up to the blurt of the name of whatever politician he hates, and can’t stop from there. Even if that politician does or says something good, he has to find a flaw, from accusing them of not believing what they’re saying to dragging up an historical crime. No one on the other side can ever be forgiven. No one can ever change their mind. Even an admission of error, or an apology, is to be banked as a weakness to be exploited. It is, it has to be said, a wonderfully simple way of living a life. No self doubt, no internal monologue. A nice simple They Are Wrong We Are Right always.

He demands instant dismissal by employers of those he does not agree with. Having said that, he does become incredibly subtle about the nuances of employment protection law if his own position comes up for debate.

Ireland goes to war? A hypothetical scenario.

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Jason O

Originally written in 2015.

1st December 2017: Russian forces enter Estonia, Finland and Poland, taking NATO by surprise. Resistance in all three countries is stiff, and US, UK, French, German and Italian aircraft all provide air support.

In the Dail, the Irish government condemns the invasion. Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein call for the United Nations “to act”. They are not specific on detail.

2nd December: it is now clear that a full Russian invasion is underway. Media briefings in Moscow clarify that the purpose of the “pre-emptive defensive action” is to secure the Baltic states, Poland and Finland as neutral states outside of NATO. President Putin goes on TV to explain the action, and, speaking in fluent German, pledges that only those countries are combat areas, and that Russian forces will not invade other European countries.

Continue reading →

What will a proposed Neutrality Amendment actually say?

Posted on April 2, 2023 by Jason O

The most recent attempt to amend the constitution and insert a neutrality amendment was in March 2022, when the assorted Alphabet Left deputies proposed the 39th amendment. The wording is below, and raises some interesting questions.

3.1° War shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war or other armed conflict, nor aid foreign powers in any way in preparation for war or other armed conflict, or conduct of war or other armed conflict, save where it is immediately necessary in defence of the State in the case of actual invasion or armed attack, and with the assent of Dáil Éireann.

3° Ireland is a neutral state. To this end the State shall, in particular, maintain a policy of non-membership of military alliances and shall not allow its territory to be used by other states to transport war material or personnel to third countries for the purpose of war or other armed conflict

4.10° The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to participate in any war or other armed conflict, nor aid foreign powers in any way in preparation for war or other armed conflict or in the conduct of war or other armed conflict, where such a decision would include the State.

For example, would such an amendment leave the government open to be taken to court for massively underspending on national defence? The proposed amendment above requires the state to “…not allow its territory to be used by other states to transport war material or personnel”. Does that oblige the state to acquire the capability to enforce that constitutional imperative, that is, military radar and interceptor aircraft? Or can we just accept the word of the United States as we do now, which makes the whole thing a waste of time? Or does “the assent of Dail Eireann” provide a get out clause to basically maintain the status that we’re “neutral” (wink wink)?

Does the European Council optout mean that in the event of an actual attack on Ireland the state would not be permitted to support the EU taking action to help Ireland defend itself? That’s certainly a very Irish solution to an Irish problem.

Also, the “immediately necessary” clause is interesting. It’s the equivalent of saying that the state will order a Fire Truck from the manufacturers only when it hears of a house on fire.

What about our relationship with Palestine? If we recognise the state of Palestine, as many on the left wish, doesn’t that mean we have to cease funding the Palestinian state as we cannot aid any foreign power (including Palestine) involved in an armed conflict, Unless of course, it becomes the policy of the Irish state that Israel is not engaged in any sort of hostile act against the Palestinian people, or that Israeli fighters bombing Palestine does not count as “armed conflict” under Irish law.

Which would be a novel interpretation, it has to be said.

Govt to extend creche safety requirements to family homes.

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Jason O

The Department of Social Affairs has announced a framework to extend the regulation of childcare working practices currently applied to creches and other childcare facilities to family homes is response to public and media demands for less light touch regulation of the childcare sector.

A spokesperson for the department said: “The public are constantly on social media and Joe Duffy demanding more policing of the childcare sector, so we expect this particular policy to be very popular. I mean, how could it not be? Of course parents will welcome the requirement of the same standards they expect of creches in their own homes.”

Parents will be required to have at least one adult (possibly one of the parents) to be formally qualified in childcare in the home at all times, whilst observing the working hours restrictions of fair employment legislation. All adults and children over 16 in the home will be required to be garda vetted, which will be needed to be in place before a child arrives in the home. Additionally, CCTV of the designated play and rest areas will be mandatory, as will written logs of the children’s rest and feeding arrangements. The HSE will have the right to enter the home to carry out child protection inspections at any time.

The plan will be implemented on the 1st April 2024, according to government sources.

An Occasional Guide to Irish Life: The Terenure Woman Who Aches To Live In Rathgar.

Posted on March 26, 2023 by Jason O

A Protestant judge living next door. It’s the ultimate South Dublin middle-class accessory and the sign that you’ve arrived in the orange bricked bastion of civilisation that is Rathgar. Look up well-heeled leafy suburb, and Rathgar is what you get. The Bijou Bistro. Howard’s Way. The High School. A piano shop. A piano shop! And for Mary from Terenure it’s the badge of honour. If she could change her name to Mary Rathgar she would. She’d have “I live in Rathgar” tattooed across her forehead if it were big enough.

Not that she’s ashamed to have been born and bred in Terenure, the southside front line between posh south east Dublin and aspirant working class Kimmage. But she’s old enough to remember the great postal code war of 1986, when some lad in the P&T had the idea that putting Terenure in the same postal code as Tallaght wouldn’t trigger outrage, and hysteria over collapsing house prices and how Terenure would be transformed into a dystopian hellhole. “It’ll be John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” all over again!”, one residents group would-be Snake Plisskin declared. How dare they! Terenure did not look to Tallaght or Kimmage but to Rathgar with its musical society and Church of Ireland Sales of Work (The scones! The traybakes! You just get a better class of person, don’t you? Oh hello Judge Smythe, how are you?). None of your let’s-be-frank common “Bring And Buy Sales” (where the cakes are all bought Teatime Express gateaux) to send Fr Mulcahy’s housekeeper “away to Lourdes” for “her nerves” and recent alarming weight gain.

Of course, it’s just her luck that when Mary finally can move across the invisible dividing line that Terenure finally begins its much threatened gentrification, with its Lotts & Co and Korean burgers and sushi and Base pizza and always worth a peek little village bookshop. But finally, she’s in Rathgar, and eager to integrate, and joining the residents associations and all the rest, especially for the gossip.

“Oh, didn’t you hear? The Smythes are moving to Ranelagh. You simply get a better class of person in Ranelagh. And the restaurants!”

Six myths about the Progressive Democrats.

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Jason O

(Repost from 2012)

I was watching Michael McDowell recently on The Saturday Night Show and almost saw him roll his eyes when asked about the Progressive Democrat legacy in government. I don’t blame him, because the party’s time in government, now seen as an historical event as opposed to being part of a current party’s baggage, allows certain myths to gather about the party, which I thought I’d write about.

1. The PDs espoused the “glorification of greed”. Joe Higgins made this point when the party was wound up, and sneered that the party was reduced to a mere two seats. Aside from noting that the Socialist Party has never ever won more than two seats (note: now 3) in its history, the greed argument is very intellectually lazy. The PDs cut taxes for the rich. They also took huge tranches of low paid workers (wrongly, as it now turns out) entirely out of the tax net. They cut Capital Gains Tax, which boosted economic activity and yes, did make some people a lot of money, But also provided social service revenue. But given that Joe has never advocated the reversal the majority of PD tax cuts, does that mean he too supported the glorification of greed?

2. The PDs espoused a rightwing Thatcherite agenda. When I was in the PDs, we used to fall around in stitches when someone on the left accused us of that. The stormiest meeting I ever attended in the party was a General Council meeting where proposed cuts to the Community Employment Schemes were discussed, and Mary Harney was left in no uncertain terms that CES had to be protected. Certainly, the party did introduce some free-market things into the healthcare sector, like the National Treatment Purchase Fund, which uses taxpayer funds to buy private or public care for public patients, and has treated over 217,000 patients since 2002. Funnily enough, Labour didn’t abolish it when they came to power. But Harney also kept (rightly) the Community Rating system in private health insurance, or as an American would call it: socialism. The party did propose letting the public sector shrink by 25,000 (an extra 0 in a typo boosted the proposal to 250,000 and became THE story of election 1997) but that was by natural shrinkage. As it happens, Labour in government has let more go.

3. The PDs were against public spending. Look at the size of the budget in 1997, and again in 2007 and tell me that was true. I wish it was, but the PDs were just as addicted to spending as any other party. Both benchmarking and decentralisation happened (shamefully) under the PDs. Embarrassing yes, right wing, definitely not.

4.The PDs were against social welfare. Again, the facts don’t speak for themselves. Welfare rates rose under FF and the PDs, and I don’t recall anyone in the party having a problem with it. In fact, the party was particularly proud of the increase in pensions and help for carers. You know, the stuff the Labour Party is currently cutting.

5. The PDs were the party of Big Business. Certainly, the party was openly pro-business, whereas FF and FG tended to hide their business contacts. But who brought in the Minimum Wage, and the Office of Corporate Enforcement, or the Environmental Protection Agency or got rid of Dublin’s smog? Labour, right? No wait, it was Eamon Gilmore and Democratic Left? No, actually, it was the PDs and Fianna Fail. The difference with the PDs was that they did not regard “business” as a dirty word.

6. The PDs were socially liberal. Again, this is a myth which people bought into despite the actual facts. The party abolished the death penalty in 1990, despite the fact that there were FF cabinet ministers (Michael Woods) opposed as recently as 1989. But aside from that, on liberal issues like divorce and contraception, the party did nothing. It attempted to reverse the X case ruling in a referendum, and despite making friendly noises about gay marriage, never actually did anything, leaving the Greens to do the heavy lifting and getting civil partnership through (something for which they deserve far more credit than they ever got). The PDs were not as much liberal as not anti-liberal.

(PD poster from the excellent irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com)

Supposing Bertie HAD done the right thing… (Repost from 2012)

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Jason O

June 2007.

COWEN, BLAMING AHERN, CONCEDES DEFEAT AS KENNY OPENS NEGOTIATIONS WITH RABBITTE.

The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, has conceded defeat after tallymen said that FF senator Cyprian Brady would narrowly fail to be elected to the last seat in Dublin Central. This result confirmed that Fianna Fail’s loss of five seats in the general election meant that it was now impossible for the party to attempt to cobble together a majority with the remaining PDs and independents.

Cowen launched a blistering attack on his predecessor, Bertie Ahern TD, for his decision, following the 2002 general election, to restrict mortgage lending and tax breaks. He identified Ahern’s attempts to dampen down the property market as the key reason for Fianna Fail’s defeat in the general election. The decision to restrict lending was very badly received by first time buyers, who accused the government of treating them like children and not letting them borrow as much as they wished.

Ahern’s January 2003 RTE Prime Time interview, where he suggested that the banks and mortgage holders were piling debts upon themselves based on massively overvalued assets caused the Taoiseach to be savaged by the media, who attacked him (and not just in their weighty property supplements) of being alarmist and talking down the market. Ahern’s refusal to back down led to a gradual slow down and modest dip in property values, and following heated rows in heated tents in Galway with party supporters, finance minister Charlie McCreevy announced his resignation, accusing Ahern of lacking courage.

The policy led to a substantial drop in employment in the construction industry, with unemployment leaping from 3.1% to 5.1%, and demands for the Taoiseach’s resignation by some FF backbenchers. Fianna Fail suffered heavy losses in middle class areas in the 2004 local and European elections, with Fine Gael trouncing FF with a clear call to reverse Ahern’s restrictions. Polls showed clearly that Ahern’s interference in the property market was deeply unpopular with middle class and aspiring middle class voters, and in June 2006, following a sustained campaign in the media, Charlie McCreevey announced that he was challenging Bertie Ahern for the party leadership. Although he defeated Ahern in the vote, McCreevy was beaten in the subsequent leadership election by Brian Cowen, his successor as finance minister, who pointed out that he believed in the “traditional idea that the leader of Fianna Failer should be, you know, a member of Fianna Fail.” The new cabinet announced it was reversing Ahern’s restricting on lending and restoring the tax breaks to the building industry.

The incoming Fine Gael/Labour coalition has said that it does not believe the fact that the country is building over 80,000 housing units when Sweden, with double the population, is only building 12,000, to be a cause for concern.

In other news, the family of Capt. Edward Smith, the “mad” captain of the RMS Titanic who rammed an iceberg in 1912 and caused over a £100,000 worth of damage to his own ship, have petitioned the British Government to clear the captain’s name. Smith, who died disgraced in 1950, always maintained that if he attempted to turn the ship away from the iceberg it could have been badly damaged along its hull in such a way as to sink the ship, a theory that modern engineers have recently begun to suggest has merit. For years, the phrase “To Smith Oneself” was a derogatory naval slogan to describe a foolish action taken by a person who claimed that they were attempting to avoid a greater catastrophe.

The former luxury liner continues to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in London, where it is moored.

What if…Ireland elected a Right-Wing Government?

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Jason O

The exit poll for the 2029 general election caused gasps in the studio. Recent polls had shown that the outgoing Sinn Fein/Fianna Fail coalition was struggling but still competitive. The New Democrats, led by former FG TD for Dublin Rathdown, Eve Hennessy, were doing better than expected. The polls had given the new party a consistent support level in the late-thirties, with her former party struggling to keep about 10%. But as the first boxes opened on the Saturday morning, there was much talk of what was termed “shy Tory syndrome”, where voters are embarrassed to admit to voting for certain (usually right wing) parties, but acting accordingly in the privacy of the polling booth.

Hennessy had been mocked when she had been elected in the disastrous (for FG) election of 2025 which had seen SF come to power. From a wealthy south Dublin family, Hennessy had proceeded to become one of the wealthiest people in the country when she founded the Banshee Group which manufactured both civilian and military drones. She had rapidly become disheartened with FG in opposition, and the prevailing belief that some sort of natural electoral pendulum would restore the party to power eventually. Watching SF in power, she simply did not accept that, and speaking in a debate in UCD (in what the media would call The Belfield Platform) she took no prisoners and outlined a broadly right wing view of how Ireland should proceed.

“…It is time to be blunt about it. The people who get out of bed to go to work, who do overtime, who save money to get a nicer car, or bring their kids to Disneyland, are national heroes. They, through their taxes, carry the country, fund the welfare system and should not have to apologize for wanting to keep some of their own money. It is their money.”

“…it is a liberal value to want to walk the streets without fear of attack, and yes, someone with a string of previous convictions should have those convictions taken into account, and put into prison, and that means that yes, we build more prisons. And if judges can’t understand society’s need for violent offenders to be jailed, then let’s get new judges. They are, after all, just public sector employees.”

“..I believe in the welfare system. I am a European, and I believe in the social safety net. What I don’t believe in is the “social leaba”, that those capable of working simply choose not to and put the lámh out. Let me give you something to ponder: what would happen if we restricted the dole, in a time of labour shortage, to 18 months? What would be the effect?” Continue reading →

Pressure Point: A Romney/Obama Adventure. (repost from 2012)