You can safely say one thing for David Cameron and George Osborne: they don’t give stuff away except they have to. For a time it seemed as if there wasn’t another brass farthing in Osborne’s coffers for Scotland. Then came the sudden surge for national independence and wouldn’t you know it, there were all sorts of goodies that the Tories promised Scotland if they’d only vote to stay with the union. They did.
Now it’s our turn. Cameron has as good as promised that if we sort out the mess of talks that kept leading our politicians up cul-de-sacs, he could see the possibility of our getting control of corporation tax. Or that’s what’s claimed. We’d promptly lower it to 12.5 % and so make ourselves as attractive (we hope) as the south of Ireland.
So have we got ourselves sorted – backed out of all those cul-de-sacs, and approached power-sharing with serious, co-operative intent? If you haven’t been living in an oxygen tent for the last six months you’ll know that we haven’t. Pace Gary Hart, we’re on the road to nowhere; and that’s why, among other reasons, Osborne won’t pass control over corporation tax to us tomorrow. If he did, Scotland would want the same level of control. And Wales. And Yorkshire. And London. You can see how all that would very likely end – yes indeed, Virginia, absolutely right, in tears.
So since Britain can point out that the paddies can’t agree, there’s not much point in passing an important economic lever into their control. We’ll be thrown back on our own resources – a terrifying prospect.
What was it Ian Paisley said the first day to Martin McGuinness: “You know, Martin, we don’t need these people coming over here telling us what to do. We can run this place better ourselves”. Right. Pity his party look as though they’re intent on proving him wrong.
On the other hand, if Cameron’s real concern is getting the DUP on his side after the May elections…
The addition of one letter in the last paragraph attributed to paisley would make more sense. Place an ‘I’ between the u and n in the word run.
Jude after your last foray into the world of economics it might have been better for you not to talk about Corporation Tax…just saying like.
Ha haaa,Neill – you little rascal you! ‘Foray’ – haven’t heard that one in a while. I do confess that the world of economics is something of a mystery to me. And most of my predictions are off too. But then judging from 2008, economics is equally a mystery to the throngs of ‘experts’ in the Western World and their predictions were bone-brained too. But I imagine you have both sussed, neill. So explain it to us. You know, like Gregory – speaking slowly….
I am frankly appalled that you mention Gregory in the same breath as me….! needless to say we have to have Corporation tax as part of our economic policy added to this we need to look at our education system that is not producing the type of people that businesses need then we need to change employment laws and many boring changes that frankly Stormont isn’t prepared to do…
That’s odd, Neill – he speaks very highly of you….I agree that there should be clear links between schools and work – but I’d very firmly point out that education is not designed to supply a compliant work-force; it’s to produce thoughtful, rounded human beings. There is a danger that we’ll see ourselves as succeeding if we design assembly lines and call them schools.
That’s odd, Neill – he speaks very highly of you
Gregory was always a very shrewd judge of character…
The problem we have jude is that by and large schools produce doctors lawyers civil servants but yet no business people…i supose the key problem is that business people tend to be rebels and dont fit well into schools?
Between the Trojan Horse of late and now the Greeks bearing Gifts one is almost tempted to observe, Esteemed Blogmeister, that Norneverland is truly going all Hellenic in a handcart.
Greek, did one hear one’s inner Mickey Mouse squeak? Oh, yes. Though born into the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg family Prince Philip was actually delivered in Greece, on the island of Corfu. Hence, his full entitlement to be affectionately known as Phil the Greek.
‘Corfu, blimey’, mutters Perkie’s inner Alf the Cockney, ‘we don’t know the ‘alf of it, then. Not a bloomin’ fing”.
When his third cousin Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was all of thirteen years of age (yes, 13), Phil the Greek first began to correspond with his bride-to-be: Wow ! But then his mother, Princess Alice, was a somewhat unorthodox lady and was a late vocation to the sisterhood when she got herself to a nunnery. Wow, indeed.
When the Generals took over in Greece she was invited to do a runner and to spend her declining years in the relative penury of Buckingham Palace. Compelling the nunnery in Greece to put up this sign on its door: ‘Alice does not live here anymore’.
When double b for Brendan Behan was on his death bed in hospital his dying wish to the nursing sister was: ‘may your son be a bishop’. But even BB wouldn’t dared have scripted anything like the fairy tale of Phil the Greek (93). (Soon to be translated into leprechaun, one understands, by Big Chief Crooked Mouth).
Anyway, the word on the streets of the Free Southern Stateen to the dogs on same in Norneverland, is the b-word: beware ! Be – wow, wow – ware!
No need to look any further than the recent RTE documentary on the risible fall of Sir A.J.F. O’Reilly. It is the ultimate Raglan Road to rags story, rich with pathos, affluent with bathos.
Right from the off of this probing, disrobing look into the innards of the Other Half Per Cent, there was an echo of the Great Gatsby about the documentary. Even as the camera in the helicopter panned slowly over the Georgian pile of Castlemartin House in the County Kildare these words came to mind:
‘In his enchanted gardens, men and girls came and went like moths, among the whispering and the champagne and the stars. I believe that few people were actually invited to these parties.They just went.They got into automobiles that bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door’.
Even the nameplace where The Great Gatsby was located – West Egg- was evoked: Tones, who for so long kept the wolf from his many doors, being surely the greatest West Brit Egg-chaser of them all.
And as the camera dawdled on the sheer vastness of the rural estate below, with its broodmares, ancient woodlands, rose plantation, prize herd of Charolais, geometric parklands and watercourses, bounded on one side by The Pinkeen Stream and on the other by the Laurel Walks perhaps the single most poignant aspect of all was…..?
The quaint herd of genuine Irish donkey? To commemorate no doubt, The Great Derby of 14-18.
The fact that the Stud race horses were clad in the colours of Belvedere College, the same educational establisment of the Establishment to which the snotty nosed J. A. Joyce was whisked by his Corkonian duncher doffer of a da so ‘no son of mine will be contaminated by the Paddy Stinks and Mickey Muds of the Christian Brothers’.
No, in Perkie’s modest opinion, neither, but rather the most poignant object was ……..the giant Monkey Puzzle Tree.
As the central topic of today’s blog is, in a world, the moola, scratch, dosh, dough, the readies, greenbacks, loot, lolly, dibs and spondulicks (a s-word with as many variations of spelling as the current b-word in vogue) it is well to remember that ‘monkey’ is a slang word in the Q’s English which is not derived from the Cockey rhyming slang, like, say, dough: bread and honey.
Rather is ‘monkey’ (500 smacker note) sourced to the returning soldiers of the Indian summer days of the Empah who remembered (fondly) the primate which graced a similar note on the local rupee.
And it is truly a puzzle beyond the mere understanding of a wilderness of monkeys how The Great Gatsby could be so flummoxed by The Great Vatsman. Or is it? Perkie’s inner A.T.M. would somehow sadly beg, and beg to differ: Acting The Maggot does have its limitations.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The GG, pride of the horsey set, astutely observed that ‘the rich are different from you and me’. It was his contemporary, the self-important Ernest Hemmingway who added ‘yes: they have more money’, actually, in The Snows of Kiliminjaro’, late of this parish, as the say in The Unionist Times.
(Perkie knows the above because is took their common literary agent, a dude name of Perkins, to come between them, but this lugubrious tale is not about Perkie).
Not anymore, is Sir A.J.F. O’Reilly different to the rest of us. Just as well (1) his biz empire in Heinz had its H.Q. in PIttsburgh. Whose city council has thoughtfully provided a pawnshop around the corner. Just as well (2) that Tones inherited the following motto from the original owners of Castlemarkin Manor House: ‘Victrix Patientia Duris’ which Tones’ inner Belvo boy was able to translate without a b for bother on first being confronted; ‘Patience is victorious in Hardship’.
It most certainly will need to be what with derelicts dying by the night on Georgian doorsteps of mouldy old dough-drenched Molesworth Street within placard-waving sight of Sinister House.
And just as one started off by drawing attention to the Norneverland need for being wary at the sight of Gift-bearing Greeks, coincidence rears its hydra head once again to say: hy !
No, not that the good Lady O’Reilly mark 2 is of good Greek stock, but rather that Tones, in all fairness, did all he possibly could to keep the Wolf Tones from the doors of pub and club in the Wee North. This was done by his setting up of the The Ireland Fund.
Fund being short, of course, for Fundament if one were to go be the insertion of so many eager tongues up the Fund of Sir A.J.F. O’Reilly, most poignantly, perhaps, by a SDLP giant who has been brought down to size so much that the myopic Perkie can no longer make out his name in lower case letters.
Which enables one to conclude by reporting on a rumour which is positively demonstating on a daily basis on the streets of Dublin at the moment. To wit, that the beleagured Yawnaiste is seriously considering a move north of the Black Pig’s Dyke and which side is soon to be rolling in the lolly.
Seemingly in a bid for the top spot in the S.D.L. P.
The move would be seamless: to take over the Sleeping Draught LP would not even mean a change in hairstyle: the distintctive bouffant would remain the same.
In the mortal words of the immortal Buddy Hollywood: Think it Over.
The lady does not protest enough, methinks.
On the first day of December, It was a refreshing change to listen to a Trade Union representative on Radio Ulster/Raidió Uladh articulate the need for an alternative initiative to arrest the trend that is turning the north of Ireland into an economic wasteland. For months we have listened to nonsense about the lack of money to fund services and all of a sudden, the Chancellor has millions of pounds to pump into the Health Service, this side of an election? It was equally interesting to listen to the Minister for Finance dance around the issue with statements about “waiting to hear” the fine detail, as crumbs drop off the table in No 11 Downing St.
The Trade Union representative challenged many misguided assumptions about Public Sector Workers in a robust and respectful manner. Some of our current elected representatives could do worse than emulate this manner of debate. It is all very well to attack public servants until streets are flooded, bins need to be emptied, roads need gritting, nursing homes, residential homes or hospitals and schools need adequate staffing, not to mention the need for carers. Many employees in the private sector are less than happy with zero hour contracts and the ethos of “hire and fire” that is a feature of insecure, temporary employment opportunities.
The Trade Union representative challenged the fact that many companies avail of lucrative tax breaks that bolster the concentration of wealth in transnational corporations. The Finance Minister conveniently avoided the fact that the skilled and qualified, like profits, continue to leave the country. He also adopted a “wait and see” approach in relation to corporation tax as the imperial masters continue to work out what is in the best interests of the captains of industry. In his reference to the economic plight of the current administration in Dublin, he failed to mention that it is working people who are bearing the brunt of stealth taxes and other austerity measures. It was greed and corruption that caused the financial crisis. Many of the “entrepreneurs”, “developers” and “politicians” responsible for the crisis continue to live off the fat of the land in far flung tax havens. The Trade Union representative deserves credit for this initiative.
Slab Murphy and his bandits, have stolen millions in tax evasion, and somebody had to be supporting his CAUSE. What a cheek to complain about George Osbourne finding money.