Our cat here will demonstrate the relaxed and optimistic feelings that are induced by knowing Sarkozy is no longer leader of France. Until she becomes distracted by her own tail.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… The relief is palpable.
OK, it’s not exactly a revolution. The fact that Hollande won by just a few percentage points against the man who presided over some of France’s biggest disasters in decades is hardly inspirational. But he does stand for things that actually require standing for, like social equality and regulation of the finance industry. It is at least a crack in the panic-induced consensus of social sadism.
So maybe now please we can have some actual debate about the Fiscal Compact?
It is hard not to get angry and just switch off, but what is being discussed on Liveline (Irish radio phone-in) as I write is a legitimate question: Is it unfair to judge the actions of Cardinal Brady in 1975 by the standards of our time?
Quick summary: While still a priest he had a role, though apparently little more than a secretarial one, in a church investigation of allegations against the notorious serial child rapist Father Brendan Smyth. The case is among the most infamous, because Smyth was allowed to keep raping for many years despite this and other internal investigations.
As far as Brady is concerned, his job was to take down and pass on testimony to his seniors for investigation, not to act on it personally. He feels that he discharged his duty by playing his part in the system that he trusted. The criticism rests on the fact that this evidence was never acted on by those authorities. Given his personal knowledge, should Brady have gone above and beyond what he saw as his duty to pursue the matter, perhaps even drawn it to the attention of social services or police?
It is true that things were different. Nowadays it virtually goes without question that a child’s complaints should be thoroughly investigated, and given the high likelihood of anyone who has sexually abused children doing so again, not to act on credible evidence is tantamount to reckless endangerment. Things were much less clear-cut in 1975. It was not something much spoken of publicly. The standards of the time – such as they were – did not abhor child sexual abuse any less, but they worked on the widely-held supposition that something so horrific was an almost inconceivable rarity.
In other words, these standards were based on the effective suppression – by individuals, the church, and other institutions – of the truth about the prevalence of child sexual abuse. So to judge Brady by the standards of his time would be to judge him by standards he played his part in creating. That could not be acceptable.
We must nevertheless attempt to put ourselves in his position, and needless to say it is not one any of us would like. There was no guarantee that legal authorities or social services would have taken things any further, and to speak out would have almost certainly brought down the severe disapproval of superiors and peers within the organisation to which he had dedicated his life. I do wonder how many of us can honestly say that we would have gone beyond what we saw as our duty. I hope I would, I know it would have preyed on my conscience if I had not, but I can’t be sure if I would have broken rank.
And I certainly would not have risen to the position of cardinal if I did. Which is worth contemplating. People who become cardinals are precisely the people who don’t break rank, but suppress their own consciences and follow the interests and assurances of their organisation.
So I actually care little if Brady stays or goes. Whoever takes his place as cardinal will also be a cardinal. The important lesson here is about allowing any organisation to act as a law unto itself.
It’s all right, I don’t need help really. It’s just the only wordplay I could think of. For today was May Day, a feast dedicated to Spring. Except in Ireland where it’s dedicated to Mary, because only the Catholic Church could transform a feast of fecundity into a celebration of sanctified virginity.
Of course before the Christians it was Bealtaine, still by tradition the first day of summer, and we’ve never let the fact that it’s usually raining deflect us from that.
And God it was miserable today. So it made my mind up. I have just now booked my holidays. I’m going to sunny Finland. Seriously. It’ll probably be much warmer than here, come July. I plan a week or so of simple rustic pleasures. Camp on an island, take saunas, get naked, chop wood. Though not in that order.
So I’ve just been through the usual “Ryanair or Aer Lingus” juggling game. The last time I went Finland way I just plumped for Ryanair, unrealising that if I’d gone with Aer Lingus I would have only paid a little more to fly straight in Helsinki where my friend actually lives, as opposed to Tampere, a tiny airport that’s a short bus ride – and then a very long¹ train journey – north.
So this time I gave Aer Lingus serious consideration. Just as well – Ryanair doesn’t fly to Finland anymore. Not directly anyway. You can go there from Stansted. Alternatively, you can fly from Dublin to Tallinn in Estonia, from where it’s a pretty short hop. There may be other ways you could make it, it’s not too easy to figure this out with their site, but taking a two-step trip with Ryanair is out of the question anyway. If the lateness of their first connection causes you to miss the second, they take no responsibility.
They’ve been a great influence on Aer Lingus though. It’s no exaggeration to say that the national airline is often actually the cheaper now. OK, in some respects their service has just plunged to Ryanair’s level, but at least you don’t get the feeling that if you click the wrong thing on their site you’ll lose a kidney. With Ryanair everything you press seems to raise the price, including the back button.
Mind you, there are signs that Aer Lingus might be going that way. It would be easy to get the impression that even after you’ve bought your ticket you still have to pay for your seat! In fact it’s an option to book a seat, but it’s not very obvious that you don’t have to.
I called it the national airline; of course, it’s now 3% less national. Abu Dhabi carrier Etihad just got a bit. We buy their oil, they buy our strategic transport infrastructure. That’s going to end well. And with the country’s finances being in the state they are, speculation is rife that the government will sell off its share. My flight’s not until July; by the time I take it, it may not be with an Irish airline.
Though this being Finland, very fast and reasonably priced.
And yesterday was a fine day indeed, as it turned out. I think I met more new people than in the previous year altogether. This is good, this is what I need. One of the reasons you get too dependent in a relationship is that you stop knowing other people. I have restoration work to do on my social life.
First I was at the book launch of a local poet, Thanks for Nothing, Hippies by Sarah Clancy. Nice stuff. Then a meeting of activists against the Fiscal Compact, which was the main inspiration for yesterday’s piece. This was stimulating because I’ve done nothing like it for many years. As a cartoonist, a commentator on events, you try to keep actual political activity at arm’s length. I have never joined a party, association, or union. I’m even pretty reluctant to sign petitions. Being right at the coalface felt like a safari – even a spying mission.
The meeting was addressed by an economist, Professor Terry McDonough, and it was pointed out to me that I had done cartoons for a book he co-authored a decade ago. So I thought to check and, yes, you can buy a book I illustrated on Amazon. Lord knows, there may be more of my work available there. After all I forgot this one completely. It’s nice to be reminded that I do more than I think.
Each section is self-contained, well presented with graphs, charts and cartoons.
How’s that for recognition? Also:
Order, buy, borrow or steal “Mind your own business” then pass it on to fellow workers. Probably the most user friendly handbook on economics/industrial relations in print.
Recommended stealing! There’s no higher praise from anarchists.
One reason a lot of people will vote for the upcoming “austerity amendment” is that they assume it must, when it all comes down to it, be good for us. Sure it’s going to hurt, but in the long run it will help us have a stronger, better economy – right? It’s a natural assumption. And it would be dead wrong. The wholesale destruction of government spending if we succeed in making its insane deficit-slashing timetable – or the fines if we fail – will shrink the economy precipitously. Disastrously.
But why would the EU want to do that to us? It’s puzzling, but it’s not out of any personal animosity. We are but a small cog in this, and we don’t squeak half enough. It’s just that it’s a one-size-fits-no-one set of strictures that would burden even the healthiest European economy.
The Fiscal Compact has two main objectives. The more obvious one is to outlaw the sort of behaviour that got Greece into trouble – essentially, excessive public borrowing and spending. But note that that’s absolutely not what we did. We were good. We paid back debts when we had the money, we ran a surplus. And though our public spending rose, the highest it ever went was still only the Eurozone average. Very arguably we should have been spending well above that, our public services were still grossly underdeveloped even at the height of the boom. Yet this referendum will have the effect of cutting public spending more drastically than ever. And aside from hurting our most vulnerable, that will of course crush the economy even further. As I said a few days ago, it is the cure for the opposite disease to the one we have.
The second and more covert purpose of the compact though is, putting it as crudely as it deserves, to save Angela Merkel’s political future. In order to win her next election – she has about a year and a half left to go – she needs to convince the German people… Not that the Euro is good for them, no. That’s not enough. That the Euro is the Deutsche Mark. A currency run to Germany’s peculiar rules, for Germany’s peculiar circumstances.
Which are peculiarly set against Keynesian economics, the (well-proven) theory that the best thing a government can do in times of economic depression is borrow and spend to promote recovery. This technique lost favour in Germany essentially because it was employed by Hitler. In the Post-War era a new orthodoxy was needed, and they found it in “Ordoliberalism“, a system in which government must play only the most minimal role. It has worked for Germany so far, but Germany has been in almost continuous growth since it started. That might seem a recommendation, but ordoliberalism is a theory for the good times, utterly lost when facing a crisis of these proportions.
It seems likely that only the introduction of the Euro averted the failure of the German system. From being overburdened by the costs of Reunification with the post-Communist East, Germany went rapidly back to being the richest and most productive economy in Europe. Essentially, by selling more goods than ever before to the rest of Eurozone – while simultaneously lending us the money to buy them.
Germany had become Europe’s company store.
It is worth noting that Merkel’s approval rating is at an all-time high back home. She’s getting to project herself as tough by beating us up. So why is Enda Kenny agreeing to this? Is there some secret backroom agreement where he gets to be her bitch now in return for favours down the line? It’s the only way you can make sense of his apparently acting against the country’s interests. But we can’t depend on the existence of covert deal. Even if it exists, it can so easily be repudiated. And in return we are being asked to write vows of poverty into our own Constitution.
If this referendum passes, the best thing you could do would be to get out of the country as soon as you can. And be sure to bring your more vulnerable relatives with you.
Anti- austerity demonstration, Dublin, Ireland (2) (Photo credit: Tom Szustek)
I’m just back from the meeting I plugged yesterday – “Let’s Get Fiscal: Women’s perspectives on the Austerity Treaty”. How was it? In a word, inspirational.
In a few more words, inspirational but surprisingly poorly-attended. I don’t know what kind of turnout I was expecting to a gig with the terms fiscal, women’s perspective, and austerity in the title, especially as we were there to watch a video link you could as easily have viewed from home, but it is a shame that more people didn’t come. It was an eye-opener.
For this reason: It was astonishingly positive in tone. Usually the No side in an EU referendum campaign dwells on fear of change and the unknown. This time though it’s the Yes one that, in a fine paradox, has to campaign negatively: Pass the referendum or terrible but inexactly specified things may happen. This meeting emphasized the opportunity that the vote presents – to take a stand against the recent trend in Europe towards the economics of austerity, against the enormous long-term damage this will do to the more vulnerable economies. And especially, to the more vulnerable people living in those economies.
This is a treaty that exists to placate financial markets, to benefit the very people who brought about the crash. We ought to know by now that greed is one thing you cannot placate. The more we socialise private debt, the more we rob from the poor to give to the rich, the more those markets will squeeze. They know a good thing when they see one. This referendum gives us a chance to say no, no more.
So Britain has gone back into negative growth, fairly conclusive evidence that budget-cutting your way out of recession is like clearing a path through the forest with a flamethrower.
Yet in the eurozone, we seem determined to repeat the error. The forthcoming Fiscal Compact is a legal undertaking not to go into budget deficit. A good thing in principle; of course a country should, in the good times, be creating budget surpluses that will see it through the bad. That’s just prudent. The thing that appears to be escaping them here though is that these are not the good times. These are, in point of fact, the really, really bad times.
We can sign a treaty to promise to balance the budget, sure. What we cannot do, is balance the budget. Not without the wholesale destruction of not simply welfare and health systems, but everything. Policing, education, investment, the fabric of the state.
So are we signing this treaty with the intention of breaking it? Perhaps it is meant purely as a pro forma sop to the markets, Or indeed to the German taxpayers, who seem to forget that they profited vastly from the eurozone boom and so have to be wheedled and cajoled now that it’s come to payback time. “Yes yes, of course everyone is going to balance their budget.” That doesn’t seem a proper way to go about things.
I don’t mean that a fiscal compact is a wholly bad idea. If we’re going to share a currency there have to be some rules. But remember, we had rules. We had the Stability and Growth Pact, of which this is merely a sterner reiteration. Did we break those rules in the boom? Nope. Right up to the Crash of 2008, we ran a surplus. France and Germany broke them, reckless to the effect that had on other countries. They benefited from the conditions that drove our economy to meltdown, and yet somehow it’s we who have to suffer again. This new treaty is the Big Two’s more rigorous attempt to discipline themselves, but what is merely chastisement to them may beat us to death.
Here in Ireland, our Supreme Court has judged that this compact amounts to a new international treaty with constitutional ramifications, and must be put to the people. This is a great aspect to our Constitution, but it means we’re yet again going to have a fraught and confusing public debate. Highly technical and highly political, the text of the treaty is hardly going to make for clear and balanced discussion. So it’s unlikely to be for the right reasons whichever side wins.
The Yes camp will be monging fiscal fear: If we don’t pass it, we won’t be able to raise the money we desperately need to keep the country afloat. But wait, in order to borrow money we should pass a law against borrowing money? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. The No camp on the other hand will be upholding our economic sovereignty. A brave stand, which has been likened to defending the virginity of sex workers. There is only one economic sovereignty, and it’s called “having money”.
At the moment, it looks like we’ll pass it. The incorrect arguments of the mistaken pragmatists will be more persuasive than the incorrect arguments of the mistaken idealists. But it is not too late to change direction. We have a chance here to make a real and lasting difference.
Sure, the last time we turned down an EU treaty they pretty much gave us another chance to say the right answer. All we really did was delay it. But this time, a delay could make a difference. The cavalry – in the form of Hollande winning the French Presidential election – might just arrive in time. He has announced his intention to reopen the treaty, and at least take some of the emphasis off austerity. (Oh those crazy reckless Socialists.) Meanwhile, the other eurozone countries have a chance to absorb lessons like that coming out of the UK.
So Ireland could play a key role here in saving the EU from a tragic, destructive mistake. Enforcing balanced budgets in the long term is a sensible idea. Enforcing balanced budgets during an already murderous recession is not economics, it’s applied sadomasochism.
_________________________________
Let’s Get Fiscal: Women’s perspectives on the Austerity Treaty
Anyone in Dublin or Galway interested in a public meeting on austerity policies, with particular reference to their impact on women? You can attend the event physically at Feminist Open Forum, Central Hotel, Exchequer St, Dublin, or by live streaming at the One World Centre, 76 Prospect Hill, Galway.
Not a term you hear much these days, fornication. For those of you without the benefit of a Catholic education, fornication is the sin of having sex with someone who isn’t your spouse, a puzzling concept in a day and age when few still believe in sex after marriage.
Michelle Mulherin’s (FG) use of the word in a Dáil debate was amusing, but rather distracted from the issue. This being that the courts have found – years ago – that there are circumstances where a woman has a right to an abortion, but the legislature has never overturned existing or created new law to decriminalise it in those circumstances. It’s such a touchy subject that even an ostensibly woman-friendly party like Labour are avoiding it. (This attempt to correct the situation was sponsored by the tiny Socialist party.)
The basic problem is that the issue is not open to reasoned debate – not when a significant proportion of people (probably a minority now, but still a blocking one) stick with the Pope‘s opinion that human life and its concomitant rights begin at the moment of conception. It’s an extremist position, but it effectively closes down the subject. If abortion is murder, how can you even discuss it?
Others do take different stances. That humanity begins at birth, or that there is some stage of development after which a foetus may be said to be human. The latter though is really passing the buck. There is no medical definition of humanity, the start of human life – conception, birth, some point in between – is a matter of how you define life and how you define humanity, a philosophical question with no definitive answer in science, or indeed in scripture.
This being the case, can we not accept that the only relevant opinion here is that of the woman?
It’s now got worse, they want us to do away with crucifixions, they want us to deny we are Christians publicly.
Ben Dunne either advertising his chain of gyms or his contempt for democracy. Possibly both.
So said Ben Dunne, in a bizarre tirade to a radio chat show. The paper corrects him to ‘crucifixes’, sadly, but the rest of his wild and weird inaccuracies – that the EU wants Ireland to stop playing the Angelus bell on public radio, or Christianity is being banned and that European money is somehow contingent on this – still stand.
Of course, most of you don’t know who Ben Dunne is. Time to put on your safety harness, we’re off on a brief, scary ride through the dark side of Irish politics.
A former tycoon, famous for lavishing gifts of money on politicians, more famous for an embarrassingly public cocaine-and-hooker freakout in an Orlando hotel (my favourite response: A t-shirt with a map of Florida, a line of coke, and the legend “Ben There, Dunne That”), most famous now for his part in business dealings described by a public judicial investigation as, “profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking”. Yet there he was on the radio, ranting – even raving – in defence of his religion.
Pretty sure his religion was wishing he’d shut the hell up.
Before the last Lisbon Treaty, one of the things I got a commitment from senior people in politics about was that the Angelus wouldn’t be done away with.
He thinks he can get politicians to change continent-wide treaties to suit his personal desires. The scary thing is, there was a time when that might not have been delusion.
Of course, the Lisbon Treaty had as much to do with broadcasting the Angelus as it did with tourist visas for mermaids. Opposition to Ireland’s national broadcaster playing one religion’s chimes every day doesn’t come from the European Union. It comes from Irish people who want the separation of church and state to actually mean something. Anything.
Dunne is clearly teetering on the edge of derangement. You would feel sorry for him if it wasn’t for his egotism and bullish bluster, and for the incredibly destructive influence he has had on Irish democracy. He cannot be scapegoated for all political corruption – there’s simply far too much of it – but he is so perfectly emblematic of it. And in a way it explains his faith – or perhaps vice versa. How else could he have done all that, without an unshakeable belief in a saviour who can forgive anything?
But he is a man out of time. There were headlines when the census results were released about Ireland still being ‘overwhelmingly Catholic’ after all that has happened, but that really depends on what you mean by Catholic. Sure, 84 percent of the population identified themselves as such, but for a lot of people religious affiliation is mainly just that – a cultural, historical identity. Many assume that you are supposed to put down the religion you were born into, whatever you actually believe now.
Two thirds of those who call themselves Catholic don’t attend a weekly mass any more – and that’s according to a survey published the church (PDF). Three quarters find the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality “irrelevant”, and a similar proportion says woman should be allowed to be priests. Three in five think the Church is wrong about homosexuality. 87 percent think that priests ought to be allowed to marry.
If we define being Catholic as accepting Catholic dogma, there are almost no Catholics in Ireland at all. It’s mainly just Ben.
That’s what it says on the final reminder to pay your Household Charge (the new property tax being introduced here in Ireland). They manage to combine meaningless bullshit, calculated deceit and veiled threat all into one brief phrase. That shows flair.
Don’t pay the charge and your neighbors suffer, it seems to say. As if central government is lowering its funding to local authorities by precisely the amount the household charge should raise. Of course, central funding for local spending will be reduced by far more than the household charge was ever going to raise – even if everyone could pay, never mind will. The shortfall will eventually be made up by allowing local authorities to raise the charge. So central government can keep lowering its contribution, effectively raising taxes while avoiding blame.
Neat.
I just wish though, instead of this careful blend of wheedle and threat, instead of pitting neighbour against neighbour, they’d try being honest for once.
“We’re sorry, we know it isn’t fair to ask you to bear such a big portion of this debt. But as you probably know, the more money people have, the harder it is to get it out of them. We promise we’ll go after the the tax-dodging bastards, but right now we need money fast and it looks like it’s got to be you. What do you say?”
