Socialist McGuinness warms to Capitalism

 

“We deserve a non-sexist, pluralist, democratic socialist Ireland.”
Sinn Fein General Election (Westminster) Manifesto 1997

“EMU [European Monetary Union] is contrary to our socialist, republican objectives of national sovereignty in political, economic and social terms.”
Sinn Fein EU Election Manifesto 1999.

“We are the only party bringing a distinctly republican and socialist analysis into the heart of Irish politics.”
Sinn Fein General Election (Republic of Ireland) Manifesto 2002

“Sinn Féin’s objective is to defend and consolidate the advances already made. To open up new arenas of negotiations and struggle and to continue to build the bridge to our ultimate objective - a united democratic and socialist republic.”
Martin McGuinness, Feb 2006

“The American Ireland Fund was privileged to organize and host the first event of the first joint visit to the United States by Dr. Ian Paisley, First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Mr. Martin McGuinness, deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, at the New York Stock Exchange on December 3rd, 2007…the Ministers’ message was that Northern Ireland is ‘Open for Business’. There could not have been a more appropriate setting to relay this message than the New York Stock Exchange, the cradle of capitalism.”
From the American Ireland Fund website, December 2007

Restaurant de « Rhetorique de la Service Publique en Irlande »

Bienvenue

Menu du Jour

Foie gras sautée de « best practice » avec jus vert

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Centre d’agneau « d’ excellence » avec une sauce de menthe

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Selection de fruits « world class » avec cointreau et crème

Prix : €55 billion

Please note : Payment is required in advance. Significant delays may be experienced in the delivery of service or in some cases there may be no service. The descriptions/terms used above are no guarantee that your meal will be of the standard indicated. Waiters are not available to discuss delays in service or any other problems. Please do not bother the Head Chef-Manager if you are dissatisfied with the meal or the service, the only answer you will get from him is “It`s not my responsibility.” The staff of the restaurant may decide during your evening that the many pay rises they have received over recent years are not enough and may wish to negotiate with you for more money to be paid by you in addition to the 55 billion euro already handed over. If you are dissatisfied with your evening overall, may we suggest you try a different country.

Construction Industry Federation explains why housing sector has slowed

The Construction Industry Federation today complained that speculation regarding the announcement of possible reductions in stamp duty in the budget for 2009 was the main reason why the outlook for the housing industry remains poor. Tom Parlon, former Minister for gathering-sensitive-information-on-state-tendering-processes-which-
would-be-of-assistance-to-the-construction-industry-if-he-was-ever-
in-need-of-a-job and now Director General of the Construction Industry Federation, welcomed the reduction in stamp duty announced in the 2008 budget on Wednesday but rejected claims that it would make little or no difference to a housing market under serious strain. According to Mr. Parlon, “the market is in rude health. People are holding off on investing because they’re now wondering whether Minister Cowen will reduce stamp duty further in the next budget. And the one after that. And maybe the one after that one. That’s it. The fundamentals are great, its just government indecision that’s affecting transaction volumes.” When asked why the market boomed for many years in spite of the ‘old’  and apparently punitive stamp duty regime, Parlon responded “Shag off.”

Impressing on Integration Policy

Got a rare firsthand insight into the scarily static world of the Irish civil service at a conference the other day. I say rare because it is so seldom that our bureaucrats ever leave the safety of their official bunkers. I attended a workshop on migration in which the first speaker was a chap from the loftily titled ‘Office of the Minister for Integration’. I assume this guy was a principal officer or an assistant principal. Let’s face it, anyone below these grades are generally not trusted by their masters to be able to speak and yet say almost nothing. Our friend had employed a tried-and-trusted civil service Plan ‘B’, now that Plan ‘A’ (never to have to account for yourself or your Department/Office to anyone) had patently fallen through. The chap was to speak on the work of this Office of the Minister for Integration but ‘unfortunately’ had to leave almost immediately afterwards. This is Plan ‘B’. No need to worry about engaging in any real discussion or debate once you’ve said your piece. Sweet.

The chap probably had the crowd on his side to begin with. After all, the Minister for Integration is none other than the politician whom many would nominate as being least qualified and suited to the role. Conor bleedin’ Lenihan. This is the arrogant boyo who bawled at Deputy Joe Higgins in the chamber of the last Dáil to ‘stick to the kebabs’, a reference to Higgins’s support of Turkish building workers. This is the guy who fell asleep whilst waiting to be interviewed over the phone by TV3. I’m still convinced the ministerial appointment was a sick joke on the part of Bertie. Clearly, an Taoiseach places immigration and integration issues near the bottom of the political agenda.

Anyway, back to our friend. What a performance. For twenty minutes we listened patiently to…….well, nothing actually. The Office are doing ‘a lot of thinking, a lot of reflection’. ‘Studies’ have been commissioned. That old corker. There’s been a lot of meetings, lots of consultation. A few quid handed out here and there. These elements of the Office’s work, which seem to be pretty much all of it, were conveyed several times over, just in case we were missing the point. We don’t have any policies on integration in Ireland and its clear from this representative that we shouldn’t expect anything anytime soon. I nearly burst out laughing when this vacuous state-of-affairs was justified with some guff to the effect that some countries have been dealing with immigration for fifty or sixty years and they still haven’t got their policies in order. I think he was getting confused between policy evolution through the decades and actually having any policy at all. I’d say Lenihan has fallen asleep a few more times since taking up this particular office.

One question that I wish I knew the answer to is the following: Is there even one employee in the Office of the Minister for Integration that is a member of any ethnic minority group? I’ll eat my hat if the answer is yes.

Unfortunately the Office of the Minister for Integration has no dedicated website I can provide a link to, so you can make do with this instead.

Postscript: The Minister for State should really get himself a website. A few days after I published the first draft of this particular item, I googled `Office of the Minister for Integration´ and guess what was the first search result? Yes, yours truly!!!!!

Stop the Lights!! The Leaving Cert. Timetable has Changed

The Department of Education and Science, that sleeping dinosaur of the Irish State, has just exploded out of the traps with a ground-breaking policy move……the timetable for Ireland’s national secondary school examinations has changed. Holy Crap! What a bold move in the reform of Ireland’s antiquated education system!

I wonder how many suits in there in Marlborough Street (Dublin, HQ of Department) mulled over that one. No doubt there were task forces, reviews, position papers, countless meetings, reviews of reviews etc.

According to Sean Flynn of The Irish Times, who tends towards the fawning and gushing when writing about Mary Hanafin, Minister for Education and Science, the reforms were “pushed through” by her.

If minor changes in the overall scheme of things, such as this, have to be ‘pushed through’, the education system is in an even worse state than I thought. Interesting choice of words from Sean Flynn. It almost suggests that even Mary gave up waiting for her mandarins to quit talking and make a decision. They probably had to be clinically sedated as the press release was written up, such is their fear of any change to the status quo.

Speaking more generally, I’m intrigued by our apparent preoccupation with the secondary school terminal examinations. The media (RTE, main broadsheets) go ape-shit during the annual exams season, going as far as to report on what was in the paper and what candidates thought of it. I’m sorry, but if you’ve done the exams you don’t really give a damn what was on the paper every year since. The media frenzy is part of the Irish middle-class obsession with Leaving Certificate grades, ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, and getting into the ‘right’ course in the ‘right’ college.

Click here for the full text of that ‘Times article on the timetable changes.

What this blog will be about

This blog is my attempt to develop and clarify my thoughts on the Irish State, an entity I believe has got serious, serious problems. Many things in Irish society get on my rag as well, I’ll be highlighting some of my pet concerns from time-to-time.

I don’t believe the state has any substantive legitimacy beyond serving the interests of the people of this country[1] - their present and their future. I think this is a reasonable stance. Yet I can see little or no evidence any more of this raison d’être as a working ethos of the institutions of the State. It would appear that the State has developed an utterly inward-looking, self-serving agenda. The beating heart of any State, what pumps the life-blood to its various organs, is the people, the citizenry. In the case of Ireland, the State seems to have crushed its own heart and but has kept on living and breathing like some crazed zombie. Mind-boggling incompetence in the management of the State’s business is rife. This is all the more difficult for me to take because I work for the State. I believe in the notion of public service. I see a huge potential for the State to do so much good with effective, visionary management. However, in the current circumstances, I have become deeply cynical of the whole exercise. I pledge no allegiance to any institutions of state that are not democratically accountable.

I’m no socialist, let me say. Socialism is scary. Like any entity with huge resources, state power can so easily be abused. I believe that the limits of state power should be clearly and strictly demarcated. I see no role for the State where it’s not needed. But in spheres where its participation is essential, such as public services, this should be done efficiently, effectively, equitably, and, where required, ruthlessly.

I’m clearly not a lone raver. In today’s Irish Times, for example, it’s reported that a Minister of State (junior minister in Irelandistan), John McGuinness, has declared that the work systems in the public service are ‘a joke’. His directness was no doubt facilitated by the fact that he was addressing top company executives, who I’m sure are totally in agreement with this view. I doubt if he’d be so strident if he was addressing a union conference. Like many statements from politicians in the current administration, his comments had the whiff of detachment; that the public and civil service is somehow at a remove from the government, that the latter does not responsibility for the former. Nobody personifies this attitude more than our Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Bertie Ahern. Still, fair play to McGuinness, it’s an honest and frank admission of the failure of his own government to sort out the public service. For more info, see http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2007/1126/1195682333633.html

Perhaps one of my most radical views is that, increasingly, the state is being run not for the benefit of ordinary citizens but for the benefit of those who work in it. I think the Benchmarking farce is part of the evidence for this claim. I intend to develop my thoughts further on this over the coming months.

So, if I can keep the motivation and discipline going I intend to use this blog over the coming months and years to try and build a case for the need for radical change within the ‘modern’ Irish State. I need to get stuff off my chest if I’m going to remain sane in this life. And of course if there’s anything else I think is worth mentioning (e.g. a great movie or album recommendation) I’ll stick those in as well.

Btw, the cat above is Stimpy (Simpson J. Cat) from Ren and Stimpy fame. If you have never seen a Ren and Stimpy episode on TV, you don’t know what you are missing.

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[1] I accept that there are other important roles for a state which do not directly benefit its people, such as donating funds to support the development of poor countries or for disaster relief in far-flung parts of the world. I have no problem with this, in fact I would argue that these actions are strongly supported by Irish citizens and therefore, in a sense, the state is acting in citizens’ interests by doing this kind of thing. Likewise activities or actions which aim to contribute to the process of bringing peace to particular conflict areas.

Hello

Up to now, two things have remained curiously absent from my life, despite the fact that everyone else around me seems to have them. The first is an iPod. The second is a personal blog. As we hurtle to the end of 2007, I’ve decided its time to start remedying these glaring deficits. Setting up a blog is free, so why not start with that? Welcome to Irelandistan.wordpress.com!